M&S focuses on Romania

Marinopoulos, the Greek group holding Marks & Spencer franchise for Eastern Europe, will open the second M&S store in Romania this year, although more and more M&S stores are being closed down in Western Europe these days.

Giorgos Bethavas, M&S country manager for Romania, would not volunteer further information on the new store location and the implicit expenses, but investments for the first store are known to have stood at about one million dollars.

Q1 sales of the only M&S store in Romania, located within Bucharest Mall, increased to 700,000 dollars, while last year’s turnover, calculated since the store’s opening in March 2000, stood at 1.7 million dollars. M&S is planning to derive turnover worth two million dollars this year.

“The Romanian market is extremely attractive for us. We have secured a good market position through the customer service concept and our clients are coming from all the social and age ranks,” Bethavas specified.

Beside the M&S franchise, Marinopoulos group owns a Beauty Shop in Romania, whose Q1 turnover stood at 900,000 dollars, against 1.7 million dollars derived last year.

“We are going to open another M&S store and two more Beauty Shops this year, but we intend to have one more M&S store and three new Beauty Shops in 2002,” Bethavas added, without specifying their location. According to Bethavas, Beauty Shop estimated 2.5 million dollars in turnover this year.

Marks&Spencer was founded in 1884 and today it has a network of 300 stores in Great Britain and 125 subsidiaries in 25 countries throughout the world.

The group’s initial strategy was to open international subsidiaries administered by managers from Great Britain, but it eventually failed. M&S is currently operating under the franchise system, working with businesspeople from the markets it enters.

M&S last month announced it would withdraw from all the European and US markets in order to focus on its Great Britain operations. According to the restructuring programme, the company will no longer expand at a global level and it will lay off 4,000 employees.