Saturday at noon, in the store in Băneasa shopping area in northern Bucharest, one of the biggest in Mobexpert's network, the casually clad businessman Dan Şucu can be easily mistaken for a store assistant. Unhappy with the label of a plate in the new collection he demands an explanation and reassurance that things will be fixed.
One of this year's bets of the businessman is precisely this tableware collection, which, along with the garden furniture and a zero interest lending product could reboot sales of Mobexpert, significantly hurt by the economic crisis.
Şucu believes the sales decline can be stopped by a combination of measures involving the collection on the one hand and boosting sales in instalments to 15-18% on long term on the other, which "did not exceed 5% even in the good times."
His biggest bet is the 12-instalment system with zero interest that he has implemented in stores, which he says turned an individual purchase into a collective one.
He estimated the volume of purchases that could be made on credit and took the figures to banks to negotiate a lower interest than charged on the market and then came up with an offer, the first of its kind on the furniture market, 12 months of zero interest for purchases over 8,000 RON.
Mobexpert had previously had a hire purchase system in place but customers had to deal with bank employees to get access to it and interests were not negotiated but were exactly as the regular ones charged by the lender.
After having decided to "take over the role of banker for his customers" Şucu says he would advise every retailer or entrepreneur to no longer think that the bank would ever work to the benefit of the customer and do it themselves directly, i.e. negotiate turning an individual purchase into a collective one.
Saturday at noon, in the store in Băneasa shopping area in north
