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Trade: Online commerce has developed in the last years
Four out of ten Romanians who did online shopping last year bought clothes, fashion being the most important sector according to the number of buyers on the internet, a market with a sum of almost 150 – 200 million euro.
ZOOT, answear.com and Uterque (part of the group Inditex, the owner of Zara) are only some of the brands which attacked the online fashion market in Romania over the last year. They all talk about the potential of the market and about how much importance the Romanians give to the way they look.
The Spanish giant Inditex, the world leader on the fashion market, which owns names such as Zara,Bershka or Pull&Bear chose to bring the eighth brand (the only one which was missing in Romania)first online and then to open the first shops. This is the first move of this kind: a brand which comes on the market online first, when usually the move in the opposite.
The Spanish were encouraged by the evolution of the sales online for the other brands. The online operations got to contribute with 7-8% to the sales of almost 300 million euro in Romania of the group Inditex, the leader of the fashion local market, according to the sources Business Magazin. Online,the Spanish are present with the seven brands which have also 108 shops in Romania and recently Uterque joined them. The online sales are not recorded by judicial entities in Romania which manage only the shops themselves. The sales online made by the brands Inditex are recorded by the group in Spain at the headquarters. The orders are recorded there as well, and then they are sent to the different destinations.
Inditex is an empire of 21 billion euro and over 7,000 shops under eight brands presented in all corners of the world. The Spanish group is set up and controlled by the Spanish entrepreneur Amancio Ortega, the second richest business man in the world after Bill Gates with an estimated wealth of 70 billion dollars, according to Bloomberg Billionaires. The Spanish entered the local market in 2004 in franchise with Pull&Bear, and Zara, so that three years later they entered the market directly. Today they have 108 shops under seven brands Zara, Zara Home, Bershka, Stradivarius, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti ?i Oysho.Online the Spanish entered Romania for the first time in 2013 with the brand Pull&Bear to add the others later.
The last in the portfolio is Uterque, a brand launched in 2008 which focuses on shoes, bags and accessories with a limited collection of clothes. As regards the position, Uterque addresses the clients with income over the average as a jacket is between 1,000 and 2,500 (220 and 550 euro) and a bag has a price covering between 500 and 1,500 lei (110 – 330 euro).The Romanians’ appetite for internet purchases convinced the Spanish to continue their expension on this market sector.
Online has developed over the last years, winning the electro-IT market first, then book, cosmetics and clothes. Almost 2.7 million Romanians had a part of their purchases made online and most buyers (almost 40%) oriented to clothes and shoes, next coming electronics, house appliances and cosmetics and perfumes according to the market data. The buyers could double, so that those who buy clothes can get perfumes as well and they are recorded in both categories. As a total, four out of ten Romanians who buy online acquired at least once clothes and shoes from the internet.
