The FINANCIAL — Nikora Trade LLC, JSC Nikora’s wholly-owned subsidiary, is experiencing positive results from the year 2015, aiming to continue its impressive development on the local market this year as well.
This year Nikora Trade issued bonds estimated in value at USD 5 million. Secured placement of the bonds was provided by Galt & Taggart. The period of validity of the bonds is two years while the annual interest rate reaches 11 percent of the nominal value.
“Nikora Trade has been progressing over the years and is currently the largest organised supermarket chain in Georgia. Respectively, development is followed by the corresponding innovative steps including the issuing and placing of coupon bonds. By the way, Nikora is the first company to not be affiliated with Bank of Georgia that has issued its own registered securities,” said the Chief Executive Officer of Nikora Trade, Davit Urushadze.
Nikora Trade owns the record number of supermarket branches in Georgia – more than 200 stores all over the country. After merging with another supermarket chain – Nugeshi – and becoming 100 percent shareholding owner, Nikora Trade became the holder of the largest trading network in Georgia last year.
Meanwhile, Nikora Trade itself opened 17 new supermarkets in 2015.
“Our company operates under three trading brands, Nikora Supermarket, Nugeshi and Libre. We do not expect any other changes for now or the near future. All three brands will have an opportunity to develop equally. We are actively engaged in the planning of new supermarkets opening in the capital Tbilisi, as well as in the other cities and large regional centres of Georgia. Accordingly, these three brands will be able to increase the number of their trade points equally.”
The sales amount of Nikora Trade exceeded over GEL 190 million in 2015. This was a 60 percent increase year-on-year.
Nikora Trade has served more than 110 thousand consumers.
Up to 2,600 people are employed by the company.
The intensive development of Nikora’s supermarket chain in the way in which consumers see it today, started from 2010.
Nikora supermarkets have over 25,000 sorts of products currently in circulation. The company imports products from Turkey. It is the exclusive representative of Pinar, the dairy and juice producer company.
“We are constantly renewing the assortment available in our network. We are trying to offer different products in order to offer an alternative to our customers. Nikora is working hard to develop its service on a daily basis. Our main goal has always been to offer qualified service from our consultants. We are fully responsible for all the products purchased at our stores; that they are of high quality and meet their shelf life. Besides the variety of products, we have the ambition to be associated with high quality service. We work hard to keep this niche,” Urushadze said.
Consumers’ appreciation of the Nikora supermarket chain has been underlined with the winning of a Golden Brand 2015 Award.
Q. Nikora Trade offers saving (bonus) cards to customers. What are the benefits of these cards?
A. Nikora Trade foresees customer demand and has offered them a new saving, bonus card. This is how we express our gratitude for the loyalty of our customers.
The cardholder can be any person who wants to own a card, and only on the basis of having a personal ID card. The accumulation of bonus points, as well as spending them, is available in all Nikora supermarkets throughout Georgia and also in the hypermarket Libre.
Cardholders will be granted one main plastic card and three key fobs. By swiping them points will be accumulated on the main card and the cardholder themselves can then use any accumulated bonus points.
100 points on the card corresponds to GEL 1. For every GEL 10 spent at Nikora retail units cardholders get 10 more bonus points.
In the future we plan to improve the functions of the card so that our customers can enjoy even more benefits.
As of today we have already issued 292,000 cards. This means that demand is growing gradually.
Q. Nikora decided to try to find its first customers. Could you please tell us about this campaign and how it ended?
A. We started this campaign while issuing the savings cards. Our company has experienced 17 years of history already and we wanted to find the first customer who ever opened the door of a Nikora supermarket. We were interested in whether this customer was still loyal to Nikora and just wanted to say thank you.
Thanks to our first cashier we created a photo-fit and found our customer whose name is Giga. He is now a symbol of the long-term friendship between Nikora and its customers.
Actually, this was a good example of one of Nikora’s PR-marketing activities.
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