Glassware makers craft profit margins of above 50%

Decorative glassware, jewellery boxes or manually crafted perfume vials are bringing Romanian glassmakers profits of in the range of tens and hundreds of thousand of euros. Whereas at the beginning this happened through exports, now the situation has changed.
Glassmakers have come to realise that they can also base their businesses on Romanian customers who love decorative art glassware.
“We started operating after 1990, with Art Nouveau replicas.
In the beginning, production was 100% exported, with Japan as the main market (80% of production), followed by the US, France, England, Germany, Belgium, Spain or Italy,” stated Monica Coman, manager of Buzau-based Coman Design glass manufacturing plant, the first privately-held decorative glassware producer in Romania.
In time, the firm has changed its strategy so as to include artist works signed Misu Coman beside replicas. “Later on, we focused on artist works, with my husband being a designer, a plastic artist.
In time, we became known; we started selling well, even on the Internet, on auction websites. Then, the percentage has changed. Now, 80% of production are artist works and 20% replicas,” explains Coman.
The development of Coman Design prompted its owners to expand. Whereas in the beginning they overlooked the domestic market, this has subsequently become a significant profit source for them after they opened four outlets, two in Bucharest, one in Constanta and one in Focsani.
The glassmaker last year reported turnover worth 2.9m RON (800,000 euros), but it will not witness considerable growth this year because of investments meant to bring the plant in line with EU standards.
The owners of the glassware plant consider their business, like any art business, is very little developed, but that Romanians are highly receptive.
For the future, Coman Design plans to open new outlets countrywide, as well as conquer new markets in Asia.
Another company operating in the field of decorative glassware is BTC Glass Design.
“Our company was created in 2000, but the business itself started developing in 2002, when we began producing manually crafted decorative items,” stated Marin Mereuta, import-export manager with BTC Glass Design.
BTC Design last year generated turnover worth 875,000 RON (242,000 euros), up 19% from the level posted in 2004. Turnover increased amid the rising value of exports and the higher number of orders attained in the wake of the firm’s aggressively participation in fairs abroad.
Despite the increasingly more expensive raw materials, the management of the firm states profit often overshoots the 50% mark, with production costs accounting for about 20%.