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It seems that the DIY market in Lithuania is in for some changes and not least an increase in the already fierce competition. Several factors play a role here.
For a start there is the market entry of Depo DIY. The chain from the northern neighbouring country Latvia has been represented with a store in the port city of Klaipe.da since December 2016. Since then, two additional locations have been added in the capital of Vilnius (there with an area of 30 800 m² according to the press) and in Panevezys, and another is planned for Kaunas. Depo DIY operates nine stores on its home market.
Its market entry in Lithuania has been interpreted as a reaction by the Latvian company to the fact that Senukai, the local market leader, no longer wants to keep to their long-standing agreement that it will not continue to expand in Latvia. It is already active there as partner of the Finnish Kesko group with nine K-Rauta stores, the latest of which was only opened in 2017. But in summer 2018 Senukai took over the 1A Group, the leading online retailer in the Baltics in order to be more present in particular in Latvian e-commerce.
Shifts in the Lithuanian DIY market are also expected by Ermitažas. This smaller chain belongs to the Vilniaus Prekyba trade company whose Maxima chain is market leader in food retailing in Lithuania with sales of EUR 1.5 bn and is also active in Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Bulgaria. Another group subsidiary, the Ermi Group, took over the Estonian DIY and building materials chain Bauhof in summer 2018 and also the Ermitažas stores from the joint parent company Vilniaus Prekyba. Thus, the third largest DIY group in the Baltic States arose.
One question now being asked is: how will the Lithuanian DIY store chain Moki-veži, the long-standing number two on the market, react in this situation? The company already has several changes behind it. Because three years ago the owners brought on board the German manager Michael Sylvester as CEO: he had previously worked at the German cooperative Hagebau and later in the international division of the German Praktiker chain. His involvement was temporary from the start and ended in summer 2018 as agreed.
"In Lithuania it is all about the transition from growth market to a saturated market," says Sylvester when evaluating the situation on the country's DIY market. "That's what they wanted to achieve at Moki-veži with a man at the top who had come from a fiercely competitive market like Germany."
The DIY business in…