Henkel Romania, the local division of the German Henkel group anticipates sales of the adhesives division to remain at last year’s level in RON, as a result of the high number of promotional offers conducted since the beginning of the year in order to drive sales, given the shrinking volume of construction works.

"We have conducted five or six big promotional offers, plus several others though smaller, to stimulate end buyers and spent about 50% of the marketing budget. We have reached our target in RON for the first five months and we budgeted annual sales of the adhesives division to at least 2008’s level, though in RON, because we will see a decline in euros," Lavinia Ciurtin, marketing manager of Henkel Romania’s adhesives division told ZF.

The company has not revealed the value of the sales of adhesives in 2008, but, according to the latest information, it generates 50% of the total revenues of Henkel in Romania, the equivalent of about 295 million RON (80 million euros).

Henkel Romania posted 590 million RON (160 million euro) turnover in 2008, an increase of 25% on the previous year, including the detergent and cosmetics division.

The adhesives division decided to resort to direct mailing to end clients – stores, warehouses that sell directly to consumers – and rely on wholesalers less.

"Distributors are no longer announcing promotional offers on the market because they currently lack the financial power, which is why we had various promotional offers to end clients. One of them had people collect points when buying Henkel products, which prizes being then offered in form of stereos, tools, coveralls or Swiss army knives and that generated 10% of the sales in the first five months," Ciurtin says.

A promotional offer usually generates about 2.5% of the sales of a company.

"People are eager for a guaranteed gain when they