Pan or gone – Newspaper Kommersant No. 65 (7510) of 04/14/2023
[ad_1]
The structure of Sberbank, which is the official distributor of Pandora, will rename the Russian stores of the Danish jewelry brand to Pan Club and refuse to sell exclusively jewelry of this brand. This is a forced decision, since the manufacturer decided to cut ties with the Russian market due to the Russian-Ukrainian military conflict. In addition, during the crisis, expensive jewelry began to be in less demand than a more budget range.
The fact that the Pandora network in Russia may change its name to Pan Club was reported by a Kommersant source in the jewelry market. An application for registration of a trademark with the same name Panclub JSC, which develops chain stores in the country, filed with Rospatent in March of this year, found “Kommersant” in the department’s register. At the same time, the network announced on its social networks that it was refusing to sell exclusively Pandora products and would expand its range with local brands.
JSC “Panclub” is the official distributor of Pandora in the Russian market. Since 2015, Sberbank has been considered the owner of Panclub, before that the company was part of the Svyaznoy group of companies. In 2019, Sberbank announced plans to sell the company. Today, about 75 Pandora stores operate in 30 cities of Russia, according to the network’s website.
Panklub did not respond to Kommersant’s request, Sberbank declined to comment.
For Panclub, rebranding the network and switching to a multi-brand format is a forced decision. A year ago, Pandora announced the suspension of business relations with Russia, which accounted for less than 1% of the company’s global sales, due to hostilities in Ukraine. After that, Panclub faced a shortage of goods due to the termination of Pandora supplies of its products to the Russian Federation. Kommersant found this information in the materials of the court, where the distributor was litigating with the operator of the Enka TC shopping centers due to rental payments.
Before the crisis, Pandora stores, according to Infoline-Analytics, were among the top 10 jewelry retailers in Russia in terms of sales. So, for example, in 2021, the revenue of Panclub JSC amounted to 4.6 billion rubles, follows from the SPARK-Interfax data. But already in the first half of 2022, sales of the network fell by 41.6%, to 1.7 billion rubles, and its share in the Russian market decreased from 2% to 1.1%, says Mikhail Burmistrov, CEO of Infoline-Analytics .
According to the expert, the transition of Pandora stores to a multi-brand format is perhaps the only way out in this situation. Attracting new jewelry brands will allow the chain to replenish the dropped range of Pandora and even expand it, Vadim Serov, General Director of the Association of Jewelers, agrees.
The multi-brand format is also considered a more sustainable business model now that demand for jewelry is declining, says Anna Lebsak-Kleymans, CEO of Fashion Consulting Group. The number of buyers of shops of this profile, according to Focus Technologies, in the first quarter of 2023 decreased by 15% year-on-year.
The Pandora chain operates in the affordable premium segment, which is in the most vulnerable position in the face of reduced Russian spending on jewelry, Ms. Lebsak-Kleymans points out. Therefore, a positive effect from rebranding and changing the concept can only be expected if the assortment is filled with more budgetary types of jewelry than the Pandora brand had, and large-scale marketing investments, Mr. Burmistrov believes. So far, according to the expert, the company is losing out to other major players in the jewelry market with a wider and more affordable assortment.
The Sokolov network also speaks about the shift in demand for jewelry buyers to a more budgetary segment. In general, according to the company’s analytical center, the Russian jewelry retail market in 2022 decreased by 9% year-on-year, to RUB 301 billion.
[ad_2]
Source link
