Republican auctions – Newspaper Kommersant No. 25 (7470) dated 10.02.2023
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As part of the bankruptcy of the Respublika book chain, its intellectual property, including the main brand, will be put up for sale. The initial price is 53.5 million rubles. The ProLife franchisee of Kazakh businessman Igor Deriglazov, who now manages offline stores, will legally be able to use the brand even after its sale. However, the new copyright holder will have the right to launch their bookstores under the same name, lawyers warn. The Respublika brand is recognizable and may be of interest to a beginner in book retail who could restart the business, book market participants say.
As part of the bankruptcy of Respublika LLC, an auction will be held on March 23, where the trademarks of the book chain, as well as its mobile applications and website, will be displayed. Aleksey Nikolaev, bankruptcy trustee of the bankrupt, published a message about this on the Fedresurs portal. Among the assets offered in a single lot are the trademarks “Respublika”, “Respublica”, “Republic of Books”, “ipublica”, “ipublica”, the design of the “Made in Respublica” concept and the design concept of paper bags. The lot includes a mobile application for Android and a website of the network. The initial price of the assets is 53.5 million rubles.
“Respublika” was founded by the owner of the manufacturer of products “Dymov” Vadim Dymov. The company operated approximately 40 stores in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg. The network’s bankruptcy began on November 16, 2020. “Irreparable damage” to the “Republic”, as claimed in the company itself, caused a pandemic. But the problems of the network, whose loss reached 120 million rubles, began even earlier, the company’s partners attributed its difficulties to aggressive growth and pressure on book retail from online trading.
With the onset of bankruptcy, Respublika transferred all offline stores to franchisees, and the LLC itself has since managed only an online store (see Kommersant dated November 19, 2020). Now the network has eight offline points in Moscow. They are managed by ProLife LLC. The LLC itself is 99% owned by Intel-Rual LLC, owned by Igor Deriglazov, the founder of the Meloman holding, which develops stores of similar format in Kazakhstan (see Kommersant dated December 15, 2021).
“We have concluded a license agreement with Respublika LLC, the legislation does not provide for its termination when the copyright holder changes. In case of disputes with the new copyright holder, we are ready to continue working under another trademark, which has successfully established itself in Kazakhstan and has already been registered in the Russian Federation,” Natalia Yakovleva, commercial director of ProLife, told Kommersant. We are probably talking about the brands Meloman (online store in Kazakhstan) and Marwin (offline stores in Almaty).
The franchisee has the right to continue using the Respublika trademark after its sale, Anton Krasnikov, Sotheby’s partner, explains, the new right holder will simply be given the right to demand payment of remuneration.
Franchisees will face problems if intellectual property is divided between different persons during the auction or further resale transactions, Alexey Darkov, senior lawyer at Birch Legal, clarifies: “If the rights to trademarks are transferred to one person, and to other objects of intellectual property to another, then formally, the franchise agreement will terminate. A situation may arise when, for some period, two chains will operate on the market at the same time – managed by the franchisee and the new owner of the brand, then the latter will need to synchronize the work of stores, says Alexey Darkov.
Respublika is a recognizable brand, especially in Moscow, but many distributors have stopped shipping their products to the network, which has affected its range, notes a source in the publishing market. He doubts that the brand will be of interest to existing players in the book retail, but “maybe the lot will be of interest to newcomers.” Another Kommersant source believes that such players as SberMarket or Yandex.Market can become contenders for the brand in order to strengthen the book direction of their business.
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