Continued growth in Russia

Even though Russia is at war with its neighbor Ukraine: The country is still part of Europe, and it has a strong DIY sector in which major retailers from Western Europe have been involved or still are. Products and brands from the West are still finding their way onto Russian DIY store shelves, even if many companies have clearly withdrawn and closed the back doors. So how is the Russian DIY market faring? In a magazine on the hot topic of Europe, this question is certainly justified.

In 2023, the DIY market in Russia has grown again, albeit with declining growth rates. The market research company Infoline sees the most important factors for this trend in the increase in home renovations and extensions. In times of rising real estate prices and mortgage interest rates, many Russians are concentrating on improving existing homes rather than buying new ones. There are also two other factors: the number of completed construction projects has increased at a record pace, and the share of online trade in DIY sales has risen rapidly to an estimated 20 percent of industry sales.

However, higher growth was curbed by the decline in the population's real disposable income. Overall, the market proved to be stable in the face of external influences. At least that is how Russian sources describe it.

According to Infoline, sales in the Russian retail sector for building materials and products for the home and garden rose by 12% to 2.8 trillion roubles (around 28 billion euros) in 2023. According to experts, there are several reasons for this increase. On the one hand, there is the rise in inflation, but on the other hand, there were more construction projects started and more purchases were made that were planned for 2022 but postponed to 2023.

The top 10 retailers in the DIY sector increased their combined sales by 11.2 percent to 1.05 trillion rubles (around 11 billion euros), reports Infoline. They include Vse Instrumenty, Petrovitch, Stroitelny Dvor, Saturn, Baucenter, Maxidom, Obi (which, as is well known, no longer belongs to the German Obi Group) and Megastroi.

Leroy Merlin continues to occupy first place. Figures from December 2023 show a turnover of 530 billion roubles (around 5.61 billion euros) for the leader in Russia, an increase of 48.4 percent on the previous year.

However, three things changed in the first half of 2024: the brand name, the strategic direction and the name of the operating company. Leroy Merlin will be called Lemana Pro in Russia in future. This…