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BBCG brings local and foreign retailers to Food&Drogerie Retail Russia 2014

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Published: 17.02.2014 | 15:00

Source: TRCW & BBCG

The Food&Drogerie Retail Russia-2014, an international forum organized by BBCG in February in Moscow, was one of the biggest corporate events in the Russian and global food and drogerie industry.

This is evident in the list of companies and their representatives at the event. Indeed, the forum brought together the world’s leading experts and operators of retail businesses as well as their local colleagues in a two-day brainstorming conference that featured one-on-interviews on the stage, as well as special sessions that highlighted prevailing and expected trends in the Russian retail industry.

Among the international chains, whose executives, past and present, graced the event included UK-based TesCo, Ukraine-headquartered Retail Group and Ukrainian Retail, the Netherlands-domiciled Spar International, Poland-based Zabka Polska, US-headquartered The Fresh Market, amongst others.

Altogether, over 400 delegates from across the globe attended the event either as experts, speakers, VIP guests or just ordinary visitors interested in knowing the major trends in the industry from the world’s leading retail experts.

Macroeconomics, forecasts on market trends and best strategies to maximize the gains

The forum kicked off with a barrage of vital statistics, forecasts on market trends and the best strategies to maximize the gains from the benefits in the industry in conditions of increasing challenges and falling profit margins.

Among the industry experts that shared their statistics and views in this session include InfoLine CEO Ivan Fedyakov, Natalia Kolupaeva, senior equity market analyst at Raiffeisenbank, Andrei Milekhin, president of Romir Holding, a market research outfit and BeMaTek CEO Irina Bushma

Summarizing the session’s discussions, Fedyakov noted that the Russian retail is comparatively better off than its analogs across Europe, with the growth rates in the food and non-food retail segments surging, respectively, 3.9% and 5%, year-on-year.

The speakers highlighted the worsening macroeconomic indices as a major worrying trend. Lower consumption volume, caused by falling revenues, budget deficit, etc., will continue to truncate growth in 2014. These negative trends are expected to be exacerbated by the adoption of the law on consumer loans, expected to take effect on June 1, 2014.

The novelty in this legislation is that it bans the possibility of refinancing existing or overdue loans from new loans, a reality that will seriously limit the consumer’s purchasing power, and hence negatively impact on demand for goods/services. This will be bad for retailers, the speakers noted.

Special focuses and thematic sessions

BBCG was highest at innovative and organizational skills as it devised several special focus forums and thematic sessions. Key among them included the special focus session on “People: Retail as Business of Talents,” “Concepts: New Opportunities for Shop’s Development,” as well as special thematic sessions, such as СТМ and Shop-in-Shop, amongst others.

The forum in general, and these special and thematic sessions in particular, provided a platform for the leaders of the food and drogerie sector and their international colleagues to share ideas, exchange opinions, discuss the best industry practices that always guarantee success as well as some shortcomings that need to be avoided at cost.

Specifically, the session on “People: Retail as Business of Talents,” featured Ilya Yakubson, the president of the Dixy Group, a major Russian retail chain, and Roman Lunin, the chairman of the Advisory Council of the Ukraine-based Retail Group, which also operates in the neighboring Moldova Republic.

Both speakers highlighted the importance of human resources as key to success in the retail industry. Both speakers noted that their companies have invested lots of capital as well as other resources in personnel training, creating favorable working conditions and provision of incentives, including both vertical and horizontal promotions and career growth mechanisms, to ensure loyalty of staff and full commitment to their companies.

The speakers at the session, “Concepts: New Opportunities for Shop’s Development,” included Maria Ra retail chain founder Alexander Rakshin, Verny retail chain CEO Oleg Vysotsky, Gordon Campbell and David Moore, respectively, Spar International CEO and business development director, TD Aniks CEO Yuri Nikitin and Dmitry Scherbakov, owner of the Sanga Style chain and Russian Style-97 Co.

These speakers, drawing extensively from their companies’ practices and observations across the industry, spoke about the prevailing trends on this market, expected tendencies and challenges and ways to overcome them.

Fielding questions on building staff loyalty, especially at the top management executive level, Vladimir Sadovin, the CEO of the premium food brands retail chain, Azbuka Vkusa, noted that his firm had adopted a policy of award 7% of the firm’s equity to executives that had excelled over the period under review, usually once in three years, in the chain.

Closed door sessions for serious talks

Apart from open discussion platforms, the retailers also had the opportunities to hold “closed door meetings,” where retail chains’ CEOs/owners were able to address their “most intimate, in-house issues and problematic aspects in the industry and their searches for their resolutions” far from the hearings of journalists and other market players on the other side of the barricade.

The forum also included some excursions to some of the best retail chains on the Russian market, including the Perekryostok Express and the Globus Hypermarket, which offers own production and full production cycle of ready-for-consumption foods.