Tibor Kujbus, head of Reál Hungária spoke to our magazine.

• – What did 2011 bring to Reál Hungária? – Stability, despite that at the end of the year, Arzenál, one of our owners parted ways with us, due to differences in our strategic vision.

• – What is your strategy? – Reál used to work as a purchasing centre of its members but we would like to turn it into a retail company. Arzenál still believes in the necessity and importance of wholesale. This difference of opinions generated conflicts so we decided to go separate ways.
• – How will you organise product supply? – We are going to establish our own warehouses. One of them opens on Kondorosi Road in Budapest in January, with a HUF 400-500 million stock (our offices will also be there); the other will work in Pécs from February. About 100 employees will work at the two facilities. We hope that doing away with one link from the supply chain will induce a better information flow, and more precise and direct feedback from stores.
• – Improving the supply chain and information flow require IT development. – Our two new warehouses could form the basis of introducing a new, standardised IT platform. At the moment our stores are not part of this development because their IT levels greatly differ. By the end of the year we would like to unite our regions in a joint wholesale database with a HUF 100 million investment.
• – Do you think that Hungarian-owned retail chains will be able to catch up with multinational companies in the competition? – Hungarian retail did really well to survive the last 20 years. It is especially promising that we are even looking for cooperation opportunities, e. g. we are procuring energy together with Coop.
• – You had smaller shops under the name ReálPONT and bigger Reál Food stores. In 2011 you launched the first Reál Premium stores as well. What will be their role? – This is a pilot project in which we are trying to enter the supermarket channel, because our experience is that in the last couple of years price became practically the only factor in shopping decisions.