Shoe Retailer Benvenuti: March Was Slowest Month In 19 Years

04.05.2013 By Cristina Roşca

March was the slowest month in nineteen years since Dan Pavel, founder and majority shareholder of footwear and accessories retailer Benvenuti started out in the retail business.

“March was the slowest month for the entire retail market since I got into this business. Retail is weather dependent and snowfall and rain did not help sales,” says the entrepreneur who started developing Benvenuti about nine years ago after having been a partner in Leonardo, the largest footwear and leather items retailer in Romania, along with Florin Panea.

Although the economy grew by 0.7% last year, much higher than the initial 0.3% estimate, Romanians are still reluctant to spend, and would rather save their money instead.

Under the circumstances, the businessman does not see any significant growth for the footwear market, and moreover, says that if one were to judge the economy by the retail performance, things are not looking very good.

Benvenuti chain has 39 stores and generates more than EUR13 million in revenue. Its business increased slightly because of the opening of three new stores in Iasi, Ploiesti and Focsani (north-east, south and east of the country).

“The growth was because the opening of new stores. If we look at the like-for-like [sales] we can see [they were] flat. Some stores posted an almost 10% decline, while others posted higher sales by up to 10%.”

Benvenuti’s revenue stood at EUR13.1 million, up almost 20% year-on-year. 2012 was the company’s best year ever, as it even posted EUR0.2 million net profit.

Benvenuti returned to profit after its owner had to rethink the business, and one of his most important decisions was optimizing the acquisition budget. The company increased the amount of cheaper products, renegotiated prices with suppliers, optimized the range of products per store and continued to cut internal costs, payroll and rent costs, a process it started in first half of 2009.

In 2013 it opened a new store in Sun Plaza mall in Bucharest, its 39th.

“We’re going forward cautiously and we’re thinking of opening other two or three stores in shopping centers.”

(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)