Baku, Azerbaijan, April 24
By Emin Aliyev - Trend:
Total volume of profitable trade space in Baku will exceed 150 000 square meters in 2015, the head of Azerbaijan Franchising Association Rasul Mammadov told Trend.
"At the same time, 150 000 square meters in large megalopolis is the area of only one shopping center. For comparison, the total fund of profitable trade space in Baku makes up nearly 75,000 square meters," he said.
Market needs no less than 15 shopping malls, he said.
"I'm talking about" healthy ", that is really functioning and developing shopping centers. The largest shopping and entertainment center of Baku today is 28 Mall, the profitable trade space of which is 23,000 square meters. This is a relatively small area. Local retail market is rather small and consequently, we do not see enough of world known brands, well known franchises in Azerbaijan," Mammadov said.
He added that local investors and entrepreneurs are interested in attracting world-known brands in the country.
"At the same time, most of the major networks, whether it is fast food chain, hypermarkets, or any other, prefer to come to new markets themselves without intermediaries. Azerbaijan as a region of little interest to them, because of the market's small size. Such players are interested in markets with high trade turnover. In this case, it is more profitable for the major networks to enter the market of entire region of South Caucasus - basically, this is what usually happens," Mammadov said.
Translated by S.I.
Edited by S.I.
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