Last week most news was devoted to the relations of retailers and the government.
After the Federal Antimonopoly Service launched a new procedure of examining the mobile phones last week, the mobile phones customs release slowed down almost in 10 times. Earlier the examinations were selective, but now the customs officials started examining all the telephones, opening the box and verifying each part with the declared one.
Because of the producers’ and suppliers’ appeals, the FTS decided to consider the possibility of widening the selective control practice over the mobile phone batches imported in Russia.
As a result, the mobile “jam” made the FTS mitigate the requirements of the mobile phones customs clearance. The customs officials decided to check one phone in five instead of each one. According to the experts’ estimates, the customs gathered about a million phones in a week.
The Federal Antimonopoly Service started to check pricing of certain product types in the retail trade networks. For example, the FAS learnt that some networks could only receive sauces through 4 resellers and not directly with a price markup of about 45%… It appeared that one of the sauce producers complained to the FAS that he couldn’t reach an agreement with the networks. In case it’s found out that the networks indeed impose certain distributors on the service suppliers, both will be fined at 1-15% of the annual turnover.
The FAS also started to investigate the cash register market. Some members of the cash register production, sale and technical support markets are suspected of a collusion and competition limiting.
It also became known that the volume of MTS claims to Euroset increased at 35.7 million rubles. As MTS asserts, the dealer accepted this sum from the MTS subscribers, but didn’t transfer them to the operator. The mobile operator prosecuted an auction against Euroset to the Moscow Arbitration Court.
The almost 3-year-long confrontation between Nokia, the leader of the Russian mobile market, and Euroset, the largest mobile retailer, has finished. The companies agreed on the new selling conditions attractive for both of them. From July, 1st the bonuses for selling Nokia phones were returned to the Euroset sellers.
The mobile store network Teleforum and the mobile operator TELE2 St.Petersburg opened the first joint monobrand store. This opening became a pilot project. The partners informed that further widening of the collaboration program in this direction is quite possible.
According to the estimates of the PR market experts, Vladimir Putin’s short-term visit allowed X5 Retail Group to save approximately the company’s annual budget (more than $3 million) for promoting its trade mark.
On July, 1st ended the termination of the exclusive negotiations agreement between the Novosibirsk network Holiday Classic and X5 Retail Group. In April the companies signed the Memorandum of Understanding: X5 was ready to buy 100% of Holiday paying the deal with its shares. As the result of the deal the Novosibirsk network owners were to receive 5-7% of the company joint to X5.
The next day Alexei Brykin, member of the board of directors and Holiday co-owner, informed that his company would continue the negotiations about joining to X5 Retail Group.
X5 Retal Group bought the remaining 25% of the shares in the company, which managers the network of Pyatyorochka stores in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk, and thus increased its shares up to 100%. The cost of 25% was defined on the basis of the company’s receipts in 2008 and came up to 576 million rubles (about $18 million).
Last week X5 opened its first distribution center, which specializes in servicing the non-food products. The center is situated in 50km from Moscow.
On June, 29th the supermarket Seventh Continent started functioning in the building of the company’s central office in Letnikovskaya street in Moscow.
Boris Morozov became the general director of the Seventh Continent company. Such decision was taken at the board of directors meeting. Term of Stepan Kovalchuk’s office, who was earlier taking this position, expired on June 30th, 2009. He was elected chairman of the board of directors.
The apothecary network 36,6 submitted the unadited account on MSFO for the first quarter of 2009. Not taking into account the rate difference effect, the company managed to limit the net loss at 47.90% up to 320.3 million rubles. The analysts point out that at last 36,6 managed to improve the work of the retail department: the EBITDA index became positive and came up to 38.3 million rubles for the first time in a long period. At the same time the analysts are not in a hurry to indicate the positive break down in the apothecary network activity: 36,6 is still affected by a great debt load.
36,6 allowed the technical default on the first issue bonds at 3 billion rubles. On July, 2nd the network liquidated a warrant on the first issue ruble bonds, but didn’t pay the debt body.
After quarreling with Protek, the major Russian pharmaceutical distributor, the network 36,6 set to increase the share of direct contracts with the producers. 22% of the networks’ sales in money equivalent are already made on direct contracts. The retailer plans to increase this figure up to 30% till the end of the year.
The Eldorado network informed about the results of opening the HiTouch zone on the territory of its stores for demonstrating the premium-segment technical equipment. The HiTouch project was launched in a pilot mode in 2 Moscow stores at the beginning of 2009. In the Moscow Eldorado store in the shopping center ”Gorbushkin Dvor” and in Eldorado hypermarket in Prishvina street the average receipt increased at about 15% — up to 3500 rubles – in 2 months.
Bosco di Ciliegi, the luxury-product seller, opens a stock-store in St.Petersburg. The store “Ostatki Sladki” will be opened in the discount-center in Sinopskaya naberezhnaya. The remaining male and female clothes collection, the teenager brands and accessories as well as the last season shoes collections will be sold there.
After Michael Jackson’s death his CD’s selling in the British and Irish stores increased in 20 times. HMV, the largest retail CD and DVD selling network in Great Britain and Ireland, already pointed out a great selling increase of Michael Jackson’s albums in the very first day after the news of the signer’s death.
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