16
Trade News THE DEAL MAKERS IFA as an Inspiration Source Euronics press conference Euronics Bucks the Economic Trend Buying group sees profit in helping Germany to get smarter Euronics International has every reason to be pleased with itself — and at its IFA press conference President Hans Carpels explained why. With its 2012 sales figures showing an increase of 8.6% to 17.6bn, Euronics has cemented its position as Europe’s largest electrical buying group and second largest consumer electronics retailer, Carpels said. But the Euronics chief conceded that “the future is not rosy” and that “profitability is vanishing”. However, Carpels said that Euronics is planning to expand once more and ran through the profitable new technology that it is pushing throughout its 11,000 stores. Smart TVs, he added, look like a potential profit turner for Euronics. The company’s largest market — Germany — is under-represented in terms of smart-TV uptake compared to France, and this is an area that Euronics is looking to exploit. To this end, it is part of an industry retail movement called ‘Smarter Fernsehen’, which aims to promote smart-TV sales. Carpels then drew attention to Samsung’s 4K OLED TV. “Customers will be amazed when they see it,” he said. Among the other products that Euronics is hoping to push in the third and fourth quarter of this year are robot cleaners, automatic espresso machines, compact system cameras with wifi, tablets and built-in fridge units. Carpels reserved a special place for hybrid tablets, predicting that demand for them would be strong throughout all Euronics’ stores. In other developments, Carpels announced the first Eastern European board member to join the Euronics team. Kirill Novikov will represent Euronics Russia — a new growth market for the company. Carpels also took stock of 2012’s CE casualties to bankruptcy or cold feet, citing Comet in the UK, ONOFF in Sweden and Best Buy. The latter had plans to establish a foothold in Europe but as Carpels put it: “They found the water too deep.” “Euronics has cemented its position as Europe’s largest electrical buying group and second largest consumer electronics retailer” Hall 23 Stand 102 Takahisa Nojima President and CEO, PC Depot Japan retailer uses IFA in business transformation PC DEPOT is transforming both store format and business model from PC specialization to an internet devices service store that combines merchandise and services. Takahisa Nojima, President and Chief Executive Officer of PC DEPOT and leader of the IFA delegation of PC Depot, says “In this age of the progressive networking of home appliances, it is important to take hints for our solution business. IFA offers a wide range of products and plenty of demonstrations, so it provides us with sufficient inspiration.” The retailer looks around IFA specifically for ideas for network solutions in consumer IT and home appliances. “Now we mainly offer five categories of contents and services and we provide these via smartphones, iPads or tablet computers,” says the CEO. He lists the five categories as magazines & newspapers, video on demand, information about earthquakes & tsunami, digitalization of their customers’ legacy analogue videos& photos, and IP phone service. “Home security and automotive networking as well as the networking of appliances should be a new chance for us to offer new solutions,” says Nojima. Regarding store formats, the Corporation has servicebased Smart Life Partner (SLP) stores in the pipeline which differ from conventional mass home electronics retailers. “Our SLP stores offer our customers everything in one store, from hardware, software, all kinds of contents and technical services, in order to bring them a smarter digital network.We utilize devices which users already have at home. This service is not limited to the devices, which were sold in PC DEPOT shops but includes a network for the necessary information and services for the user’s life.We arrange hardware, software and contents for easy and practical use. We try to convince our customers of economic efficiency by proposing, for example, a review of the current payment plan for their mobile phone or smartphone, or utilizing a digital device for newspapers and magazines.” PC DEPOT of Japan brought a delegation of 14 staff to IFA 2013. The company runs 111 stores producing about 387 million euro in revenue in the last fiscal year. www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Wednesday 11 th September 2013 17
