Cosmo approaches rural customers

Primex, the company that owns the electronics and home appliances retail chain Cosmo, has set out to penetrate rural areas and smaller cities across the country with stores, in partnership with the newly formed consumer credit company Fortuna Credit. “The very tough competition on the market in the big cities has led us to devise an expansion strategy for rural areas and towns of 10-12,000 inhabitants, where the penetration of consumer loans stands at less than 10%,” says Gyorgy Baba, Cosmo”s general manager. TBI Credit and Cosmo launched Fortuna Credit, a consumer loan company, which will start operating in December, first across the Cosmo store network, and then expanding to other independent retail centres. “Fortuna will tap into a niche of clients that are difficult to assess in terms of risk, considering that the evaluation method in rural areas is different from that in cities,” the TBI Credit officials announced. ZF