In February of this year, the largest Russian food retailer X5 Group (chains of Pyaterochka, Perekrestok, Chizhik) closed its last Karusel hypermarket. In an interview with RBC about it said group leader Ekaterina Lobacheva.
He noted that the process of shutting down the network has been effectively built. Lobacheva said that at the final stage, the closed outlets showed positive financial results, and even the last store in Belgorod had positive EBITDA (company profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. – RBC).
According to him, a change in consumer behavior was instrumental in the decision to close. He explained that over the past three to five years, the Russian consumer has undergone several transformations, the main “reasonableness of choice” and a significant overflow of viewership to the online sales channel that occurred during the pandemic.
Formerly at X5 Group registeredHe said that the decision to transform the hypermarket chain was made in September 2019, after which some stores were closed and some were transferred to the management of the Perekrestok retail chain. At the end of March 2022, the Karusel retail chain was operating 28 stores.
The first Carousel store was opened in St. opened in St. Petersburg. This hypermarket chain was founded by the same entrepreneurs as the Pyaterochka chain of stores – Andrey Rogachev, Alexander Girda, Tatyana Franus and Igor Vidyaev. Four years later, X5 Retail Group (formerly X5 Group), which was established by merging the Pyaterochka and Perekrestok chains two years ago, exercised its option to purchase Karusel.