Retail

“We are sure we will win”

For the Ukrainian retailer ProMenu, the Russian invasion – now more than half a year ago – resulted in extreme upheaval, both personal and professional. Oleg Mykhaylenko, CEO of Mirs Corporation and ProMenu talks to Tableware International about how he and his staff are continuing to run their business…

“We were closed approximately for three months from the moment of the Russian invasion into Ukrainian territory”

Firstly, how are you and your team doing since the war with Russia started?

This interview is taking place six months since the war started. So, right now, a lot of things look much clearer. During these long six months the mood and overall situation has been changed from panic on the first day of the war to now, where we are more or less stable in terms of understanding what is going on around us, of what actions we need to take. By this, I mean managing how we react to the situation and, of course, it’s been really difficult work to restore the business again. Unfortunately, the largest part of my team has moved to other countries, but thanks to the Covid period we can easily work remotely and very quickly to restore all majors for the business processes.

How is the overall retail scene in Ukraine?

Depends on which side you look at the retail. There are three kinds of retailers at the moment – the ones who closed their stores and won’t open anymore, the ones who didn’t close such as the

Did you know?

Online sales have increased for ProMenu in the six months since the war began.

food stores. Thirdly, the likes of us, the retailers who had closed but have reopened a few months after the Russian invasion.

Of course, at the beginning, when you don’t understand how to react to the overall situation, you just shut up shop, but then you measure if it is worth it to be opened or not. Of course, it depends not only on our willing, but also on the mall where the store is located. Because if it is not open, you can’t do anything about it.

What sort of impact has the war had on your business over the past six months?

We were closed for approximately three months from the moment of Russian invasion into Ukrainian territory, but even with this gap in sales we are able to cover approximately 40-50 per cent from the planned budget.

Remind us how many Promenu retail outlets there are and in what areas?

There are 16 stores of Promenu which are located in Odesa, Dnepr, Kyiv, Lviv. At this moment we are able to open 15 stores. We weren’t able to open one store in Kyiv in the Ocean Plaza Mall, and it is one of the best stores we have, because stakeholders of the mall have connections with Russia, so there are too many outside factors at play.

Are you able to access new stock?

Yes, right now we are able to get new stock from our partners. But not at the beginning. It took some time to negotiate all possibilities and conditions with our partners. As well as there being issues with freight. So, now it really is a challenge if you want to bring products to Ukraine, but at least we have the possibility of doing it.

What challenges are you being presented with getting new stock?

Firstly, the main challenge was to get back to normal communication. The second step was to make new agreements with partners in order to buy the goods. And the real surprise for us was that some small companies were so loyal to us, they cancelled all our open invoices. So, can you imagine, they just withdrew all the debts and even sent a huge amount of money to support the Ukrainian army. We really had huge loyalty and support from partners who we just started working with, or who we didn’t buy from in great volume.

But there were also opposite situation and the most unexpected for us – huge companies, who we dealt with for 10/20 years, they started to block our new orders,

changing terms of cooperation to full prepayment and so on. It was really unexpected, and it took some time to regulate all these issues, but we managed it, we are Ukrainians!

What brands are you working with and how are good being supplied to you? By air/shipping/ by road etc?

Despite all the challenges we have faced during this long six months, we are still working with all our partners who we cooperated with before the war. We were able to save the whole our portfolio. But even after six months of adapting to a new reality and life, the main problem is still logistics. At the beginning, there were issues with crossing the border, so trucks and drivers weren’t able to go and pick up the goods. There was a crisis with available trucks which brought crazy freight costs, queues

“The real surprise for us was that some small companies were so loyal to us they cancelled all our open invoices… but there was also the opposite” The fighting spirit

Oleg tells us how Ukrainians on the ground are felling right now

“Ukrainians are an undefeatable nation. We understand that, at this moment, there is a war not between Russia and Ukraine, but between good and evil. And I think the most important thing that Western countries realise is that the Ukraine is fighting not only for our country, but for the rest of the world too. We are really appreciating the help which we get from other countries and hope they will support us until our victory. We are sure we will win. And as people in Ukraine say: “Vse bude Ukraina” .

at the border and so on. Right now, everything looks more or less ok, of course we are comparing it to the first month of the war, not to a prewar period. Unfortunately, the sea is blocked and the only one way of getting any products is by roads.

What are your customers buying these days?

We do not see too many changes in the categories which people buy. At the very beginning, people were buying only the main things they needed for home – plates, cutlery and so on. A lot of people moved to new cities and needed to start from the very beginning. But right now, we have a mix of sales – sets of tabletop, presents and accessories. the traffic of the client has changed. The fact is, a lot of Ukrainians have left Ukraine, and those who are left in the country are trying to spend less time at the mall – it is not the safest place, and it can close if there is an alarm that rockets are coming.

There is also a change in the product categories which drive the customer traffic, for example, in the furniture mall there is much less people than there used to be, so, traffic generators for the malls right now are foods stores mostly.

As the result of overall situation, we have increased online sales twice. It is unbelievable, and of course, it reflects on offline sales volume. But we will do our best to keep both channels growing.

Are your customers buying their products in store or online, currently?

Offline is different story right now. One really noticeable thing is that

Will you be able to attend any trade shows this year?

Yes, of course, we already have some plans about visiting upcoming trade show in Turkey and Paris.

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