Monica Iavorschi is the first Romanian woman appointed at the helm of the biggest home appliance producer, Arctic, after its takeover by Turkish-based Arcelik. In the midst of a wrenching economic crisis, Iavorschi takes into account the likelihood of two variants – a best case scenario that involves a 5% growth from prior year and a worst case scenario wherein the turnover would shrink 10%.

Romania is the second biggest marketplace for Arcelik group in terms of market share

After six year experience in Arctic Romania, Monica Iavorschi, 35 (photo) stepped in last year as managing director of the company.

“There is a six-year experience, when I achieved insight on Arcelik group’s operations and local know-how. It was a daring decision of the group to appoint a Romanian at the helm of the company, but there is a strategy they apply more often at the international level. They have ultimately reached the conclusion that people from the local markets successfully manage to guide the company through ups and downs because they are much more familiar with the local economic environment, culture and so on and so forth. For Romania, the core objective is sales, and maybe this was the underlying reason for this decision. The up-to-date performance was positive”, Monica Iavorschi told Wall-Street.

Arctic holds a comfortable market share of 31.5%, which sends Romanian marketplace to No2 spot after Turkey for Arcelik group, the Europe’s third largest home appliance manufacturer.

If in 2008, Arctic reported a 3% increase in market share from a year earlier, for this year, the company deems a 1-3% increase as an “ambitious” goal.

“This first and core objective is to strengthen our position in the local market. We are the market leaders by far. Last year we recorded a roughly 3% hike in market share. A 1-3% increase for this year is however, an a