The clearance sales, that is the end-season rebates in Romania are beginning to resemble those in the Western Europe: a well defined period eagerly awaited by all shopping addicts, albeit not only by them.
Mid January is, under the legislation in effect since late 2002, the start of the clearance sale season, the time to get rid of the 2003 fall/winter stocks. Regardless, the windows of many shops in shopping centres across
Bucharest or those on the "traditional" shopping locations such as Calea Victoriei, Calea Mosilor or Magheru Blvd have been displaying all sorts of percentages: 10%, 30%, 50% for more than a week now, with those percentages depending on how high the rebate a specific store decided to operate for the products in the season about to end is.
The reason behind this is a very simple one, as the stores are merely taking advantage of a loophole in the legislation. "Clearance sales start on January 15, pursuant to the legislation in effect. We started sooner, but there's nothing illegal about it. We are not engaging in any clearance sale until January 15, we are actually making promotional sales, we can engage in at any time of the year. The effect is all the same to the client, anyhow," explains Mirela Rosca, executive manager of Sport System Development, a company that operates nine stores of the sports gear maker Lotto in Romania.
Other stores decided to wait until January 15, though. "We have a very large store chain and it takes quite a while for us to centralise all the data about unsold product stocks. It is a little harder to manage so that we will be offering rebates after January 15," said Cristian Angelescu, Leonardo footwear retail chain marketing manager.
Gabriel Muraru, general manager of Dinasty, which operates 11 apparel stores, has another explanation for this.
"We did not want to risk any kind of trouble with control authorities and preferred to begin end-season rebates after January 15. Anyway, we operate gradual rebates for end-season products: 20% off at first and then gradually more until the last two weeks when the highest price cuts are in effect," Muraru says.
No matter if the clearance sale season has commenced or not, stores say they expect high sales at this time, particularly because Romanians have started to grow accustomed to rebates.
"We now have a legislative framework in place and people are starting to get used to seeing January as the beginning of the end of winter season rebates," Muraru says and Leonardo's official concurs.
Law 650/2002 and Government Decision 333/2003 stipulate clearance sales for the fall/winter season are conducted throughout January 15 - April 15 and may last for up to 45 days. ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro
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