Bork plans to open a store in Uzbekistan

The Russian premium household appliances brand Bork will open one store each in the UAE, Turkey and Uzbekistan, “Ведомости” reports.

The Bork brand was founded in 2001 by the owner of the Technopark network (now an online store of household appliances) Maxim Biryulin. The parent structure of the retailer – Tul.Trade Ltd (common with Technopark-Center) – is registered in Cyprus, its current owners could not be identified. According to the official website, the chain has 74 stores, including one in Yerevan and two in Minsk. The revenue of the key legal entity of the company, Bork Import LLC, in 2022 according to RAS amounted to 12.3 billion rubles, net profit – 987 million rubles, according to SPARK-Interfax.

Bork is bringing the brand to new markets, the task is to increase the awareness of its products as a premium brand, says real estate consultant Anna Savenko. According to her calculations, an investment in one 1,000 sq. m, including decoration and equipment, will be about $4 million.

For Russian retailers, entering the markets of friendly countries is a step that allows them to reconfigure some logistics and purchasing schemes and ease the sanctions pressure, says Mikhail Burmistrov, CEO of Infoline Analytics. Letual, Golden Apple and other Russian players are already represented in neighboring countries or are planning to enter there in the near future, this will allow them to form local legal entities and purchase goods that are not available to Russian companies due to sanctions. In addition, there are large Russian diasporas in the UAE, Turkey and Uzbekistan and the potential for growing brand awareness, Burmistrov said.