Shelf-life vs floor life
Regional producers are also in danger because of the intervention of large national chains as the latter usually arrive with a standardized basic list of goods based on what the largest national suppliers produce. The unexpected urgent import substitution did open doors for cooperation between national chains and local producers who at times cannot fully comply with the volumes, while large chains are not ready to rearrange their logistics.
As a result, local companies sign agreements with those chains which are actively pushing their own trademarks (CTM) or perform as very cheap discounter retailers.
Based on the reports of INFOLine, Situation of consumers market in Russia and Rating of retail chains FMCG in Russia, by Q2 2022 there had been one but a very important change: O’Key hypermarkets moved down one step to the 8th position in the rating being overtaken by VkusVill whose revenue had grown by 39% to 49.5 billion rubles on a year-to-year basis. It is VkusVill which experts believe is a chain with the most effective cooperation with local producers and CTM producers.
Top 10 FMCG chains gathered pace in Q1 2022 and improved their results by 27% to 1815.6 billion rubles. The leader in terms of growth rate was exactly a very cheap discount retailer Svetofor with a 71% increase and the Q1 revenue of 94.1 billion rubles and VkusVill.
It must be mentioned that nearly all small formats have been growing: Pyaterochka earned 20.3%, Magnit 19.4%. The record breaker this time was Lenta as its supermarkets and small format stores made 144.1% in the first quarter this year. On the other hand, Lenta has become an owner of Billa and Semiya chains within the past six months too.
Last year, according to the same report, Svetofor opened 1,100 stores yielding the pas to only Magnit and X5 Group. Besides, the chain won the 5th place among Russian retailers for retail revenue with a 45% increase.
The supermarket chain visually stands out for its simplicity: the goods are sold in pallets or transport packaging, there are no strict categories as buckwheat can be displayed right next to fertilizers or school supplies, there are huge paper price tags and a lot of goods produced by unknown manufactures. When entering such a store, a more experienced buyer may think they are at a warehouse or a garage sale. It is obvious that Svetofor supermarkets are more popular further away from the capitals.
X5 Group decided to claim a space in this fashionable trend of economic use format and opened a supermarket “for clever buyers” called Chizhik. Their milestone 200th store has recently started work in Perm. Together with that, the company has opened another distribution centre for the chain in Yekaterinburg to serve the Ural region.