IFC Jamilco may open a chain of Mothercare stores under a similar-sounding brand

The trading company “MFC Jamilko” has applied for the registration of the Motherbear brand, follows from the database of Rospatent. Shortly before that, on November 16, she filed a petition with the Federal Antimonopoly Service for the acquisition of Monex Trading. This is a structure of the Kuwaiti Alshaya Group, which owns the master franchise of the British brand of children’s goods Mothercare in Russia. A request to IFC Jamilco remained unanswered.

Most likely, now IFC Jamilko will rename the Mothercare network to Motherbear, according to experts interviewed by Vedomosti. Officially departing brands try to maintain their presence in the Russian market in one way or another, even if they are forced to rebrand or reassign the franchise, says retail real estate consultant Anna Savenko. She believes that in this case, it is unlikely that the copyright holder will file lawsuits or interfere with the registration of a similar-sounding brand.

Nadezhda Tsvetkova, head of retail space leasing at the CORE.XP retail department, agrees with her, noting that the change of name may indicate the desire of IFC Jamilko to keep in touch with the previous brand. Mikhail Burmistrov, General Director of Infoline-analytics, also speaks about this. According to him, a similar-sounding name is better suited to quickly replace the brand in the minds of consumers. Other options (and IFC Jamilko also applied for the registration of the brands Kidstudio, Wonderkid, Wearkids. – Vedomosti), in his opinion, look weaker in terms of naming and association with the brand. However, this may not be the final list of applications, he notes.