Where the “dachniks” go shopping

The dacha is, quite rightly, a legendary institution: the Russians are still in love with the garden plots and shacks that form their weekend getaway. New dacha estates are even being constructed in and around large cities.
Gardening is one of the most popular hobbies among Russians. It is said that 47 per cent of the population of north-west Russia and 41 per cent of Muscovites have a dacha. In the far east of the country, a third of the population are "dachniks", whereas the figure is only ten per cent in the Urals. Overall there are said to be 40 million "gardening families".
For many decades, the garden on the edge of the city ensured the survival of most Russians. Now, however, the character of the dacha has changed, and it has increasingly become a haven of relaxation for the family instead of a route to self-sufficiency in terms of fruit and vegetables. This change has been accompanied by a growing interest in garden design and decorative plants, although it should not be forgotten that the self-sufficiency aspect still plays a major role for pensioners in particular on account of their lower incomes.
A second development is changing the nature of the dacha too - more and more Russians are converting dachas into permanent residences. For retailers this means that they are having to expand their ranges of merchandise to include furniture, heating and air-conditioning systems, snow clearing equipment and decorative items, products that were previously in less demand than in western Europe. The net result of this is that the market for gardening requisites in Russia is going to grow, even if it has only accounted for two per cent of the global market up to now.
According to estimates by the Discovery Research Group, the volume of the market, including garden technology, was around USD 4.3 bn in 2012 and USD 4.7 bn in 2013. The average annual outlay per household on the purchase of gardening requisites was reckoned to range from USD 100 to 500, as compared with up to USD 2 000 per year in western countries.

A decline in purchasing power led to a drop in sales in Russia after the first quarter of 2014, but experts such as Irina Rybakova at GfK Russia still regard the market situation as "cautiously positive" against this background.
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