RO: What’s the next Blu in Romania?

You can not visit Romania without noticing the SENSIblu stores all over the country. A Romanian network of 190 pharmacies with 1,100 employees, serving daily 20,000 patients. Thus, while in 1997 Sensiblu turnover was 2 million Euro, in 2005 it reached 63.7 million Euro.Sensibluâ€™s development was a dynamic one, having an average annual growth rate of the market share of approximately 30%. This fact materialized in the increase of the number of clients that step in a pharmacy each day, from 161 in 1998 to 1000 in 2006.SENSIblu stores are not only pharmacies, they also offer a wide range of cosmetic and beauty products. Also their fidelity cards with multiple benefits honors 880,000 active members.

When you visit the shopping complexes and malls in Romania, you are also attracted to other store brands names carrying the same ending as SENSIblu, Miniblu is a baby cloth and accessories stores and OPTIblu is offering all types of fashion glasses and medical glasses.I have found these 3 stores in the same shopping complex, the Feeria.I have felt that the company behind SENSIblu and the other XYZ-blu stores which is A&D Pharma is trying to grab market shares in other different industries, business universes and categories, building their objectives and targets on the successful story behind SENSIblu, hoping such extensions will not be hurting the core business as branding history proved that not all “any-type-of-extension” are workable and doable!
	When the first time I arrived into Romania a year ago and the taxi was driving me from the airport to my hotel and I saw the very first SENSIblu store on my way, the first thought and image that crossed my mind was the Bulgari perfume BLU that I used to use some time ago, which means that the Bulgari marketing team did the right job.
So what’s the next Blu is going to be in Romania, I would try to guess and say, maybe hypermarkets, supermarkets or minimarkets …