This is what Vladimir Vava, chief operating officer of Metro Cash&Carry has noticed. He sees in the customers’ ideas a positive trend for the group’s business. He also sees a potential achievement of Metro International’s target for Romania this year, which entails keeping costs at the same level, keeping profits at the same level, boosting sales and offering support to customers. Simply put, Metro International’s target does not take the crisis into account, and Vladimir Vava believes the cash&carry chain can overcome this complicated period, be it a crisis or recession, with the goals achieved.

Goals are obviously more complex than in the past years, when Vava was working on promoting and making the ‘cash&carry’ concept understood in Romania and on a differentiation from the other players in modern trade. In the past years, however, profit or sales growth were taken for granted, as the consumer goods market was growing by 20 to 30% year by year. Vladimir Vava would rather not talk about the growth pace: ”No one can tell whether we will see growth in line with what we had in the last few years or more moderate; for the time being we are doing everything we can in RON to eliminate the effect of the exchange rate.”

The optimism of the chief operating officer of the cash&carry chain resides precisely in the specificity of Metro’s customers, as well as in a potential change of consumer behaviour. ”Sales of food are the most important thing for cash&carry. I do not believe we will see a very serious decline, because people continue to eat,” says Vladimir Vava, who believes resellers should take advantage of this situation, of the fact that more and more customers choose to go to convenience stores to save petrol, as well as money, since one usually spends more money in a large store. ”To us it is a very good sign, because our customer is that trader, the owner of the small store, and the growth of their sales generates growth for us, too.”

Vladimir Vava says that Metro will adjust to the needs of the small shopkeepers as much as possible and will invest more in the private labels of the group this year: ”private brands play a very important role and I am sure private labels are an opportunity for our clients, as they make a difference in their stores.”