The Italian electrical home appliances producer Merloni Elettrodomestici, which owns the Indesit and Ariston brands, has forecast lower sales for this year compared to last year.
Despite this, the Italian company claims to have increased its market share in Romania, reaching the second position on the market after Arctic.
"In terms of their value, our sales will shrink from about 49 million euros to 44 million euros this year. Still, we have not sold fewer home appliances than last year. The volume of products we have sold was flat, but we have sold at lower prices," says Eugen Paturan, country manager for Romania at Merloni Elettrodomestici. "We focused in particular on selling basic range products, which sell at lower prices and which in the first nine months of the year pushed our market share up from 15% to 20%, gaining us the second position," explained Paturan.
The best-positioned electrical and home appliances company on the Romanian market is Arctic, with a market share of almost 30%, according to the company's own estimations. Mainly known as a brand of refrigerators, Arctic earlier this year capitalised on its high degree of brand recognition by launching a series of vacuum cleaners, washing machines and cookers, and, in the autumn, televisions, all under the same brand.
In practice, the Romanian company's orientation towards medium and low segment products has allowed it to benefit from the overall drop in the electrical and home appliances market and increase its market share.
Apart from Arctic, the main rivals to Merloni Elettrodomestici in Romania are the international groups Electrolux (which also owns a cooker factory in Satu Mare) and Whirlpool.
While Merloni has increased its market share, its two brands have developed differently. According to Paturan, the most significant increase this year was seen by Indesit, a medium segment brand.
"We cannot say the same thing about Ariston, our premium brand. This has been the first year when Ariston has benefited from a TV-backed advertising campaign. Unfortunately, customers have paid more attention to what they buy and to prices, which has largely hit the premium segment," said Paturan.
According to most players on the domestic market, sales of electronic products and electronic home appliances will see a drop this year by 10-15% year-on-year. The steepest drop, however, will be suffered by the white goods segment.
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