Milan Radin, the CEO of German-Austrian network DM Romania, has an ambitious plan for the next three years: a chain of 100 stores involving investments worth some 45m euros.
Radin, 36, returned to Romania in 2007 to run DM operations, after almost 20 years spent in various countries. Since then, he has coordinated the opening of 15 stores in major cities and is going ahead with the plan to expand to 100 stores.
After graduating from high school in Austria, he continued his university studies in Strasbourg, Plovdiv, Cieszyn and got an MBA from Sheffield University in Greece and Serbia. After having spent 2 years in the United States, he returned to Austria in 2002 as an area manager for CEE with Raiffeisen, in charge with financing, development and transport in the foreign trade department until 2004. He took the next step towards Drogerie Markt as a managing director for Serbia until 2007, when he persuaded the company’s management to enter Romania.
In November 2007 he opened the first store in Timisoara, getting, in one year, to over 15 units in Bucharest, Cluj, Deva, Targu-Mures, Constanta and Oradea.
In June, he’ll enter Constanta for the second time, with the 17th drugstore, and while he sees summer as more "quiet", in the second half of this year he’ll open a further five stores. "The area needs to have a future, the rent should offer us profitability after the 3rd or 5th year at the latest. For the spring of 2010 we’ve held talks for 9 projects and we are going to reach almost 100 drugstores countrywide in the next 3 years," states Radin, who wants to move the drugstore concept from shopping centres to street locations.
For a space of between 300 and 420 sqm, in which 6 employees work on the average, investments, including inventories, range between 300,000 and 600,000 euros. The company started working with 17 suppliers and at present over 70 suppliers are delivering beauty, wellness, baby and home care products to DM units.
Beside Unilever, Beiersdorf, P&G, Coty Cosmetics and Henkel, the network also sells 21 of its own labels, 30 or 50% cheaper than major brands. The company’s management is not disclosing the network’s domestic figures, yet, but says it saw growth way above the almost 18% international average in 2008.
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