The FINANCIAL — More and more of my friends are telling me that buying a well known brand’s product at a higher price than others is an ineffective way of spending money. Does buying well known brands keep you on the safe side during a financial crisis? Vazha Kobakhidze, Executive Director of Factor Electronics, the company that owns Brand Mall with 8 stores, says that strong brands are crisis resistant.
“From our perspective I can say that strong brands remain crisis resistant. We are seeing prices going down dramatically, but we also see that customers tend to buy the brands with better reputations despite their relatively higher price. However it should also be noted that discounts serve as additional stimulus. For example we always try to include discounts in our sales offers and for the moment our discounts are ranging from 35% to 40%,” he says.
Factor Electronics plans to bring in new investors to expand its stores in the nearest future.
“The most recent period of our company’s history has been successful. We’ve won a couple of very important tenders. And in the nearest future we are going to be bringing new investments to Brand Mall,” says Vazha Kobakhidze.
“I believe that the future of every business is dependent on well planned strategy and constantly searching for ways to expand. It’s quite difficult to think about expanding in the present market situation, but we are doing all we can to attract additional funds. The investment plan is working and currently we are negotiating with a number of big companies. The aim is to bring new investments in to Factor Electronics. This is crucial because I think that companies which can expand and attract new investors today will take leading positions on the market in the coming years,” Kobakhidze told The FINANCIAL.
Brand Mall’s network consists of 8 stores. It sells up to 15 well known global brands. The most demanded brands are Samsung, Beko, Ariston and Indesit.
According to Vazha Kobakhidze the most well sold products are washing machines and air conditioners. He thinks that in the summer sales will increase by 20-25%.
It’s been 8 months since Vazha Kobakhidze started working at Factor Electronics. Three months ago he got promoted and now he’s Executive Director of the company. He was previously working at the position of Development Manager at Factor Electronics.
He and his team have set the goal of creating a place in Tbilisi where the customer has the widest variety of products to choose from. They started this by building relationships with different companies, to whom they offered business plan and outlines.
They’ve added an additional service encounter which they call Brand Mall shopping. It entails the universality of store consultants shown in their ability to give full technical information to the customer.
The consultants underwent trainings by authorized dealers. Plus they’ve trained a team of fitters and a number of service brigades.
“Our primary value is to deliver a level of service that will exceed the expectations of our customers. The pre-sale and after-sale service, variety of assortment, well known brands at best prices imported by authorized dealers, getting full technical information and advice on buying the product from our consultants – all make shopping at Brand Mall an incomparable experience,” the Executive Director continues.
Our mission is to equip every consultant with knowledge that can leave no customer with any questions. Brand Mall shopping implies giving advice to the customer without which he/she wouldn’t be able to make the final decision. You may think you know what you want but when you walk into the store you don’t expect a rabbit out of a hat. And in Brand Mall we help customers buy not what they think is good for them but what is in fact good for them.”
The slogan of Factor Electronics is “More Than You May Think Of”.
As Kobakhidze says these words behind the slogan are well implemented in the service design that was recently introduced by Brand Mall.
“We are trying to survive this thorny patch aggravated by the current financial crisis with minimal losses. Still we had to reduce the number of our employees by 40%. There was no other way as sales had fallen and paying those people would have meant too much extra expense. In order to be attractive for investors, a company should first of all have healthy management concepts implemented. It should also be backed by transparency; otherwise we’ll become just another victim of this crisis,” Vazha Kobakhidze states.
Factor Electronics also works with sub-dealers.
“Despite the financial crisis we have been selling quite well. The fall in sales has been lower in sub-dealers than in our own stores. So working with them is profitable.”
Executive Director of Factor Electronics also adds that the hardest part in the last months was finding alternative sources of authorized dealers.
“We lost our source for a period which was the main difficulty we incurred. But now the situation is stable and as I’ve already said we are looking forward to bringing in new investments. Even though there are undoubtedly still some challenges ahead, we are ready to face them,” he concludes.
Written By Levan Lomtadze
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