Radio markets are on the verge of extinction: they survive at the expense of self-delivery points and the sale of drones

After two years of the covid pandemic, “polished” by sanctions from 2022, it has become good form for bloggers to bury Moscow shopping centers. Especially often the imminent closure is predicted for those shopping centers that specialize in the sale of electronics and related products: all the negative factors of recent years hit this range especially hard. The old “radio markets” are dying or will still live due to ingenuity and flexibility – MK found out after visiting several such centers.

The first thing that catches your eye right at the entrance to one of the specialized shopping centers is shopping places with accessories for gadgets. You can’t just get through them, the barker guys know their stuff.

– Man, what are we looking for?

Oh, those whoops in the market, the music of the nineties. If a girl of any age goes – then they said “beauty”, if a man – “respected”. Yes, and now they say, but usually still in the markets with clothes or products, but more and more often not in Moscow.

People, as the guys from the “pass-through” stalls, were walking. Some people buy what they need: selfie sticks, ring flashes, phone cases… And the most popular product (both for themselves and as a gift) is a power bank, that is, an external “battery”.

But the walk-through pavilions are, of course, crumbs: the main trade takes place in the inner building, where you have to go through the courtyard. And there, too, neither emptiness nor silence is especially observed. At least within a radius of a hundred meters from the main entrance. Rows of working establishments, sellers sit in them, buyers walk along the aisles (of course, not like here in the golden beginning of the zero). Moreover, on the second floor – you can still find, if anyone needs it, disks with video, music, games and software.

Sellers in the “video series” confirm that some revival began last year. “Moreover, they buy not the last of the Blu-Ray disc formats, but rather classic DVDs,” said Andrey, the seller. “They explain it like this: there is no BR player in the house, but the DVD remains and is connected to the TV.” Faced with the problem of blocked resources on the Internet (and also with the refusal of many providers from unlimited traffic), people remember the old schemes that worked 10-15 years ago and go for the disk…

– But in general, not everyone comes personally, – Andrey added. – We are rescued by the fact that we have reoriented to online trading through marketplaces. You can find us there, we send discs by courier or by mail to all regions.

Having visited several metropolitan “radio markets” – let’s call them in the old way – you understand that the reorientation to Internet commerce saves many tenants (and, therefore, the sites themselves). Almost all active “tents” in technical shopping centers are at the same time points for issuing online orders of various online stores. Some – like a couple of large electronics web markets – have become virtual showrooms (of course, you can buy samples from the hall here, but there are more online orders).

“It’s just that this is a well-known place, people come here to see and choose, there’s no way to leave here,” laughs Dmitry, a consultant for such a hypermarket of household appliances on the radio market in the Central Administrative District. Who is buying the most right now? Pensioners. Almost every day it happens with us that a man or woman comes for well over 70 and takes, conditionally, a German refrigerator for 200 or more thousand rubles. People, therefore, have money, and many are not ready to sacrifice quality.

Equipment with familiar Western names (all companies left Russia during last year’s sanctions) is quietly supplied through parallel imports – but prices, alas, are not optimistic. Nevertheless, even here on a working day there are buyers (at least spectators).

At the same time – if you move a little further from the entrance – apocalyptic paintings can indeed be found in almost all shopping centers. There may not be more than half of the empty “tents”, but they are noticeable to the eye, and there are very few buyers. More often than others, “do not show signs of life” tents, where they used to sell premium smartphones and repair them. The remaining tenants are slowly moving closer to the entrance, to the vacant places there: who wants to stay somewhere in the backyard, where there is silence, semi-darkness and not a single buyer?

“We went to castling, changed the pavilion,” an employee of a branch of a professional photo store located on one of the radio markets told MK. – There are both good and bad sides. Good: more people pass by and drop in. Although this is not so important for us, they usually come to us purposefully. The bad: those who have been visiting us for a long time do not immediately find us, they think that we have closed. It’s good that the guards explain the way …

On the other hand, there is also a growing sector of the market: points selling drones and accessories for them have appeared in technical shopping centers. For example, batteries and blades are, who does not know, consumables. There are no advertisements in these shops – the characteristic boxes in the windows speak for themselves. And one more thing: you can’t pay by cards, only by transfer or (preferably) in cash. Demand, sellers say, is such that they do not have time to carry.