Cristian Beznoska has been running the Elmec Romania business for eighteen months. This is his first interview, however, and he carefully avoids talking about figures. He uses the word "different" when asked how sales went in 2009. He does not like such terms as 'crisis' or 'difficult'. In his opinion, one of the most important things this year has been the capability to adjust the business to the new economic reality: "This year has been one when companies could either adjust to different conditions and continue on or face greater difficulties, because it was different from everything I have experienced in Romania until now."

Experiments began with Elmec's start in Romania, with the opening of the Nike store in itself being an experiment. Beznoska remembers that there were people standing in two lines in front of the first Nike store on Magheru Blvd in December 1999: those who wanted to get in and those who merely looked at the windows but did not have the courage to enter. Looking back, Cristian Beznoska believes that both categories went through major transformations, and both those who entered the store in 1999 and those who were watching have become more demanding in the meantime and turned into educated consumers.

The consumer change was rather fast to occur, and in the first part of the 2000's, the group wanted to bring several brands in Romania simultaneously and set up the Famous Brands stores, the first multibrand concept in the country, to that end. Famous Brands was "a natural step" Beznoska believes, who feels it enabled them to expand the brand portfolio and anticipate a new consumer profile. "It was a revolutionary concept for the retail market in Romania, which was dominated by monobrand stores.

Consumers want to have as many options as possible and I don't think anyone should be dressed from head to toe from the same company, as if wearing an uniform." Famous Brands later developed from an approximately 180 square metre store to a new level, Famous Brands Gallery. The company currently has two such stores set to be expanded by about 200 square metres each in the first few months of 2010.