On November 1, Lenta opened a hypermarket on the Obvodny Canal after reconstruction, which was seriously damaged after a fire a year ago. The restored store, in which the retailer has invested about 1 billion rubles, will be the first in a series of experiments. The company was going to change after the change of shareholders: in the summer of 2019, Alexei Mordashov's Severgroup became the owner of 78.73% of the company. The directions for transformation are chosen correctly, but belatedly, experts say.

The “crisis of the genre” forced Lenta to think about updating: the hypermarket format, the main one for the retailer, began to lose its former popularity. The trend is the same for the entire market. So, earlier X5 Retail Group announced its intention to turn 34 Karusel stores into Perekrestok supermarkets. The company explained its decision by the outflow of customers to the format "at home" and the development of online trading. Even earlier, the Finnish Prisma began to get rid of the large format in St. Petersburg. There are more and more sites on the Internet that offer non-grocery goods, so hypermarkets are reducing their range, commented in an interview with Fontanka CEO by Jarmo Paavilainen.

"Hypermarkets are under pressure," German Tinga, CEO of Lenta, agreed at a November 1 press conference. On the one hand, purchasing power affects business. “Russians sometimes spend 40% of their earnings on food,” he said. On the other hand, competition is high. According to Herman Tinga, if convenience stores open near Lenta, they often attract the audience to themselves. But the retailer is trying to compensate for the decrease in the frequency of visits by increasing the number of customers themselves, the top manager specified.

The trend is well displayed in financial reporting. In the third quarter of 2019, the traffic of comparable (more than a year old) Lenta stores fell by 2%. The average check grew by 1.5%. But in the end, the total revenue is still less by 0.4%.

In general, over the nine months, the network's sales increased by 1.9%, to 299.6 billion rubles, but the results were worse than in previous years. The company slowed down its expansion: it opened only four hypermarkets and one supermarket, but closed two hypermarkets and seven supermarkets. Among the closed was a store on Engels Avenue in St. Petersburg.

Profitability also suffers. According to the results of the first half of the year, Lenta went negative, having received a net loss of 4.5 billion rubles against a profit of 5.2 billion rubles for the same period in 2018. As explained financial director company Rud Pedersen, the loss is related to the depreciation of assets. After analyzing the performance of 78 hypermarkets and 79 supermarkets, the retailer realized that they would not return the full amount of investments invested in them, and wrote off the loss.

Unlike its peers in the market, Lenta has no plans to turn hypermarkets into supermarkets. But retailer formats will still be subject to adjustment. According to German Tinga, the management of the network is working on a new strategy together with the shareholder. It will be presented in the 1st-2nd quarter of 2020. But the direction in which the company's thought is working can be judged by the hypermarket restored from the ashes on Obvodny Canal.

Visually, the space almost does not resemble the austere store-warehouse from which the Lenta business began, and is more like a fashionable food hall or gastromarket format. The trading floor has become noticeably lighter, a lot of wooden structures are used in the design. Obviously, the retailer wants to get customers to spend more time in trading floor and do more impulse purchases. So, in addition to a cafe with burgers, wok and shawarma, the hypermarket has departments with fresh juices, ice cream and cocktails, and a tandoor oven is located in the bread department. “The emphasis is on theatricalization: food is cooked in full view of the buyer,” comments in Lenta. The layout of fresh fish on ice chips is also designed for the same. The assortment of 60 trade items can compete in diversity with the recently opened gastronomic spaces in the Gallery and Vasileostrovskiy market.

Photo: Galina Boyarkova/Fontanka.ru

Photo: Galina Boyarkova/Fontanka.ru

Photo: Galina Boyarkova/Fontanka.ru

Photo: Galina Boyarkova/Fontanka.ru

Photo: Galina Boyarkova/Fontanka.ru

Photo: Galina Boyarkova/Fontanka.ru

Photo: Galina Boyarkova/Fontanka.ru

Photo: Galina Boyarkova/Fontanka.ru

The company is also experimenting with cross-merchandising, i.e. product neighborhood different categories. For example, next to fish you can find small stands with beer, next to cheeses - wine cabinets. The hypermarket on Obvodny Canal has become one of 8 Lenta stores where individual sommelier consultants work in the wine department. In the dairy department, only closed refrigerators are used - such equipment helps to save energy. In the department of household chemicals, a corner with Korean cosmetics has been organized, which is gaining popularity among specialized sellers.

Testing of the updated format will last six months, Herman Tinga said. After that, the company will decide whether it will completely redesign stores in this style or introduce individual elements. The company will decide on the objects that should first of all undergo reconceptualization in December.

Lenta supermarkets will also change. Last year, the format brought a loss, Herman Tinga said. The company has updated its assortment, adding more fresh and culinary products. At the end of 2019, the retailer sees an increase in like-for-like sales and expects a return to profit. The stores themselves will also be rebuilt, but the renovation will start from Moscow.

Lenta will also experiment with online trading. Now the company does not have its own online store, but it cooperates with 12 delivery services in 18 cities, including St. Petersburg iGooods. After the purchase of Lenta, the owner of Sevegroup, Alexei Mordashov, reported that he was considering merging the retailer with his other retail asset, the Utkonos online store operating on the market in Moscow. But this is not a task for the near future, he stressed.

“Now we are exchanging knowledge with Utkonos and thinking about how to develop cooperation. There will be several experiments, including in St. Petersburg,” Herman Tinga said. According to him, it is about joint work at the back office level (that is, at the level of logistics, IT, accounting - everything that is not visible to the buyer) to test several new business concepts of the Utkonos itself. By mid-2020, companies will decide which ones can scale.

At the same time, Lenta will get rid of inefficient outlets. As Rud Pedersen explained, these are stores that do not necessarily work in the red, but rather do not show the results that the company expected. The top manager did not name the exact number, but noted that among them there will be both hypermarkets and supermarkets, including those operating in Moscow and St. Petersburg. But mostly we are talking about objects for rent, parting with own stores the retailer has no plans.

In St. Petersburg, Lenta intends to expand its presence, although it acknowledges that there are few suitable sites for supermarkets, and the possibility of building new hypermarkets is limited. “Including we are ready to buy other players,” Herman Tinga said. According to him, the company is studying options, but did not name any candidates for the takeover. Earlier it was reported that the owners of Land and Intertorg, who had accumulated debts to suppliers, were looking for buyers for their assets. Prisma, which is operating in the red, does not intend to leave the market, but is looking for cooperation with other players.

"Lenta" chose the right path of transformation, but did it belatedly, says Ivan Fedyakov, general director of the INFOLine agency. According to him, since the company's business is not as diversified as that of its closest competitors, it cannot abandon hypermarkets and is forced to fight for its own format. “The transformation into a gastronomic space is in line with consumer trends. The buyer has become more demanding, but many retailers are trying to keep him only by the price, not paying attention to the service,” says the expert. Lenta also has great potential for developing e-commerce. “Hypermarkets have a much wider assortment than supermarkets and convenience stores, so this transformation is more logical,” says Ivan Fedyakov. But here, Lenta is already far behind the same X5, which launched online sales a year ago, and in 2019 began to cooperate with Chinese AliExpress and issue its orders in its stores. According to Ivan Fedyakov, in the process of integrating with Utkonos, Lenta can transform some of its stores into dark stores, that is, close them to customers and use them to collect online orders.

“The prices are always cheaper on the opening day,” seller Svetlana Paramonova shared with a Newsroom24 correspondent. “I recently worked here, I used to work in Real Madrid, so I know that prices are always reduced by about two weeks.”

Trade area of ​​the hypermarket - 7.5 thousand square meters. Outwardly, it differs little from similar shopping centers existing in the city. The main advantage is the location. Here, in the area of ​​Varya station, large grocery stores no.

It is worth noting that it was planned to build a hypermarket here back in 2005. They promised to launch it in the summer of 2006, then they postponed it to 2008. Due to the crisis and financial problems, the already built shopping complex passed to other owners - the capital JSC "The Seventh Continent". This network unites 146 hypermarkets and supermarkets under the Nash brand all over the country. AT Nizhny Novgorod This is the first shopping complex of this network.

In addition to cheap goods, everyone was waiting for the widely announced performance of the singer Maksim.

The organizers of the holiday are so tired of answering questions from buyers that they even put up a sign.

However, it turned out that this was not entirely true - at 16:00, the performance of clowns began on the site near the hypermarket

an hour later, Nizhny Novgorod dance groups took the stage.

Several times they changed stage costumes and did not leave anyone indifferent.

In the shopping center itself, in the midst of the holiday, the lights suddenly turned off.

But there was no panic - sunlight penetrated through the glass ceiling, and the cash desks continued to work from a backup power source.

Meanwhile, there were more and more people on the street.

Finally, the long-awaited guest arrived in a white Mercedes.

The news that the star had arrived quickly spread among those gathered. Therefore, even those who, after going to the store, were not going to stay for the concert, were in no hurry to go home.

One of them is Galina Nikolaevna Soboleva.

She showed the Newsroom24 correspondent what products she bought for 2.5 thousand rubles. And he considers red caviar the most profitable purchase - here it is almost one and a half times cheaper than in other stores, so I bought 10 cans at once.

“Toilet paper here costs 3 rubles 80 kopecks, notebooks cost 90 kopecks, caviar, good plates cost 30 rubles, vodka is also cheap,” Galina Nikolaevna tells about her purchases.

By the way, probably thanks to cheap alcohol near the hypermarket, one could observe such a picture - a few who were especially amused from the territory of the holiday were expelled with the help of police officers.

By 18:00, all the prizes and competitions were finally over and Maksim got on the stage.

The singer treated the security of the hypermarket and the police officers quite freely and demanded that the audience be allowed closer to the stage. “We are all very positive,” she explained.

Then, that came on stage with a temperature of 38 degrees. “These rains give us colds. When I woke up today, I thought that my voice would never appear. But no, I saw you and everything fell into place,” the singer admitted.

It is worth noting that the morning cold did not really affect the performance - Maksim sang several songs and communicated very kindly with the people of Nizhny Novgorod. The audience gave her a standing ovation.

In addition to the construction of the facility itself, the project will include comprehensive landscaping and landscaping of the site in order to provide comfortable access to it and connect it with the surrounding buildings. The main entrance from Leninsky Prospekt and the nearby Troparevo metro station will be via a pedestrian ramp. From the southeast, from the side of residential development, a second entrance has been designed - a mini-square will appear here.

Both entrances at the level of the 1st floor will be united by a shopping gallery - with boutiques and cafes. A fitness center, bowling alley and a beauty salon are designed on the 2nd floor. On 3 - a children's play area, on the other hand - a zone of cafes and restaurants. A hypermarket will be located in the basement, and a parking lot for 320 cars will be located in two underground levels. The floors will be united by an oval atrium with a translucent dome.

“As Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin noted earlier, the opening of such multifunctional shopping centers means that Muscovites will receive more services close to home, within walking distance. In the project that we approved at 123 Leninsky Prospekt, special attention is paid to accessibility - high-quality landscaping has been completed, convenient pedestrian links with the city are provided, ”said Sergey Kuznetsov, Chief Architect of Moscow.

According to Kuznetsov, of the two options, a façade solution with orange metal cassettes was agreed upon: it will be well perceived from the main viewpoints of the building - from highways when driving.

The total area of ​​the mall will be 36,557 sq.m. The designer is Architectural Studio LLC.

Moscow. 28 of October. Interfax - Lenta retailer is investing about 2 billion rubles in opening 29 supermarkets in district centers, which ADG Group is building on the site of old cinemas in Moscow.

"Last week, our board of directors approved an investment of about 2 billion rubles in 29 Lenta supermarkets with a total selling area of ​​almost 24 thousand square meters. The stores will be located on leased space in these regional centers. We expect supermarkets to open in period from the beginning of 2020 to the first half of 2021," Lenta CFO Ruud Pedersen said during a conference call on Monday.

As reported, at the beginning of 2017, Lenta signed an agreement with ADG Group on the lease of premises for supermarkets in 36 complexes created on the basis of old cinemas. The retailer expected to open the first supermarkets at the end of 2018, the rest - in 2019. However, the timing of the project was delayed due to the postponement of the commissioning of district complexes and the switching construction companies to the housing sector.

“We have signed a contract with a developer who has faced the same problem as us in the hypermarket segment and will not be able to commission all the planned facilities in the second half of the year,” Jan Dunning, who then served as Lenta CEO, said in August last year. .

As a result, Lenta lowered its forecast for supermarket openings in 2018 to 40 from 50 (as a result, the company opened 38 supermarkets last year). In 2019, the retailer plans to open only three new supermarkets (one store of this format was opened in nine months).

"We expect these stores (in regional centers - IF) to be an important addition to our existing pool of supermarkets in Moscow. This decision speaks to our confidence that this format is growing and proves our intention to continue business growth," said Pedersen on Monday.

Moreover, this is the first big investment, the decision on which was made after the change of shareholders, said the financial director of Lenta.

In total, as a result of reconstruction, 39 Soviet cinemas in Moscow were to become multifunctional regional centers. Cinemas were put up for sale in a single lot in early October 2014. The winner of the auction was LLC "Edisonenergo" (structure of ADG group). The total investment in the reconstruction was estimated at 60 billion rubles.

In October, ADG announced the opening of the first regional center, created on the basis of the former Angara cinema on Chongarsky Boulevard. The complex also includes a supermarket "Lenta".

Lenta on Monday also confirmed plans to open eight hypermarkets in 2019. In addition, the company is preparing to restart a hypermarket in St. Petersburg, which was closed in November 2018 due to a fire. The store, which was one of the leaders in terms of sales and EBITDA margin, will open in a new concept, Pedersen said. The details of this concept will be revealed by Lenta when it opens the store. The retailer expects it to become its flagship.

"Ribbon" - largest network hypermarkets and the fourth largest retailer in Russia by revenue. As of September 30, the network united 375 stores, including 246 hypermarkets and 129 supermarkets.

At the end of April this year, Alexey Mordashov's Severgroup closed a deal to acquire the retailer's shares from TPG (34.45%) and the EBRD (7.47%), becoming the owner of 41.9% of Lenta. As a result of the offer, Severgroup owns a 77.99% stake in Lenta.

With the advent of a new shareholder, Lenta began to prepare new strategy development. From the old strategy that called for doubling retail space for 2017-2020, the retailer withdrew at the end of 2018, warning that it would not be able to meet that target. Another goal of the previous strategy - to become the third largest multi-format retailer in Russia - was fulfilled by Lenta, but in September it was displaced from third place by the combined Dixy, Bristol and Red and White.