real,- Hypermarket Romania is opening tomorrow, April 2nd, the chain’s 21st store, in the town of Constanta, investment amounting approximately 21.5 million euro.

The new real,- store is located in the North of Constanta, 168, Aurel Vlaicu St, in the city-belt commercial area. The store has a total surface of 12.385 sqm, out of which 7,500 square meters are selling area, and it benefits from 500 ground parking spaces, at commercial complex level. The customer traffic flow is daily ensured by a number of 39 cash registers, 4 of which are express type.

For a pleasant shopping experience Constanta Nord real,- Hypermarket offers its customers over 40,000 products of which 90% comes from local producers and suppliers, with a very diversified assortment based on two main attributes: quality and freshness.

As an innovation for customers in Constanta, real,- is introducing a wine degustation service, that allows you to taste and evaluate a certain sort of wine before buying it. The customers can choose among 24 wines, 16 red and 8 white or rose ones. In order to become familiar with real,- wide range of wines, the sampling selection is being changed once a month. In total the real,- wine assortment counts 650 types, beginning with the entry-level price categories and ending with wines from famous vineyards at world-wide level. The functioning of the tasting service is based on a tasting card that has to be pre-loaded with a minimum value of 10 lei, which allows an average of 15 to 20 tastings, depending on the chosen wines. The card can be refilled whenever the customer wants, once the amount was spent.

By opening this new store, the total investment of real,- on the retail market in Constanta is of about Euro 35 million in the two hypermarkets that created over 650 workplaces. Tjeerd Jegen, the Managing Director of real,- Romania stated about the new store opening in Constanta: "We are confident that the second store we inaugurated on the important retail market of Constanta will represent a very pleasant shopping experience for our customers: good prices, quality and freshness, a friendly atmosphere, assistance from a qualified staff and last but not least, efficient services. We hope we have proved that we are a reliable business partner for our local suppliers and also a professional employer that offers national and international career opportunities for its staff. We are very pleased with our achievements in 2008: RON net sales grow of 92% compared to the previous year, opening of 6 new stores, over 3000 new people that joined our company and an increasing number of customers that preferred real,- for shopping. At present our network counts 21 stores, and Constanta becomes the forth city where we have 2 stores. We consider that Romania has, at the time being, a dynamic retail market, where the competition is high and where we want to distinguish ourselves not only through good prices, but also through high quality. 2009 means further investments by opening 4 stores, including Constanta Nord and developing new projects, such as: Supply Chain developing, better communication with our customer, through loyalty programs like our current “take me home” campaign and new advertising campaigns for our offers."

real,- Constanþa Nord provides top quality services such as: very flexible financing opportunities in partnership with well known banks, test benches to check the purchased appliances, clothes adjusting, home delivery of bulky non food products with a price of over RON 500 per unit, product return desk, etc.  

For a complete shopping experience real,- Constanta offers its customers an adjacent commercial gallery of over 4,000 sqm, which hosts stores with varied products. They are being operated by famous companies, with well-known brands in Romania: Takko Fashion, DM, Inmedio, Farmaplanet, Vodafone etc.

Notes for editors

The real,- Hypermarket division is part of the METRO Group, one of the largest and most international retailing companies.  The company has a headcount of some 300,000 employees and operates around 2,200 stores in 32 countries. The Group’s performance is based on the strength of its sales divisions which operate independently in their respective market segment: Metro/Makro Cash & Carry – the international leader in self-service wholesale, Real hypermarkets, Media Markt and Saturn – European market leader in consumer electronics retailing, and Galeria Kaufhof department stores.

In Germany the company real,- SB Warenhaus GmbH owns some 340 hypermarkets, where approximately one million Germans per day do their shopping. real,- Hypermarket entered the international market in 1997, when the first stores were opened in Poland. Today the company has almost 100 stores in Poland, Turkey, Russia, Romania and soon to come Ukraine. In 2008, real,- Hypermarket Romania registered a very strong growth as a result of both new store openings and organic sales growth. The turnover almost doubled from Ron 1.22 billion (Euro 367 million) in 2007 to Ron 2.35 billion (Euro 638 million) in 2008 (net figures).