According to experts, the modern Russian dinnerware market is adequately formed and unlikely to take drastic changes in future years. However, the drastic changes have been noted as regards the tastes of customers residing in large cities, especially in Moscow. The main attraction points now should be an original pattern or unconventional shapes, since the customers become more sensitive not only to the dinnerware convenience and efficiency but also to its appearance.

 Glass import wins

 Several years ago the dinnerware market was undifferentiated with 90% of all legally sold dinnerware owned by the French company Arc International and its brands Luminarc, Arcopal, Arcoroc. Today the Russian market represents almost all known European brands.
However, the brands popular in the West often do not coincide with the Russian opinion, mainly due to climatic, cultural and social peculiarities of our country. A distributor acquiring the goods abroad should be acquainted with the Russian mentality and have enough intuition to select right products.
For instance, the most popular brands on the modern Russian market are Arc International (France), Bormioli Rocco (Italy) and Pasabahce (Turkey), which are both Russian and global sales volume leaders.
The market offers a wide range of ceramics, primarily nameless from China, Poland, Czechia, Portugal, France and Brazil. Porcelain and crystal have the smallest share of the mass market. Until now this dinnerware has been considered as festive, unsuitable for daily use. The situation has recently started to change and the customers wish to have something really elegant and aesthetic on their shelves and tables, where the best choice is elegant and thin porcelain. However, Wedgwood English porcelain, for example, is quite expensive. But the Russian consumers have come to understand that the real beauty supported by high quality is worth their money. The worst market conditions are demonstrated in the domestic sector since large wholesalers do not work with Russian producers. The attempts to support the domestic producer have failed for two reasons: low quality goods and inefficient plant management. Therefore, the Russian goods are scarce in official trade, but abundant at common markets.

Traders

The largest of the ten distributors on the Russian market include Red Cube, ENS, Besante, IIS-Posuda, ASB-Rating, RAMO and DP-Trade. Neither of these companies controls more than 5-7% of the market. According to Besante experts, their share amounts to about 10% in different sectors, and the share of Red Cube – to 8-9%.
The largest companies reached agreements and divided the market long ago. They try not to duplicate their assortments and pricing, i.e. everyone is doing his own business and does not interfere with that of the others. However, this civilized structure is sometimes meddled in by small outsiders who dump prices in order to gain here-and-now profit. The positive thing is that no large player will enter into any serious relations with such intruders.
However strange it may seem but the most efficient way for modern wholesalers is to create their own retail trade and retail chains. All large distributors have their shops  of Cash & Carry type. Retail trade makes the companies “intersort”: for instance, RAMO buys Screwpull wine accessories from DP-Trade and DP-Trade buys certain Henckels items from RAMO.
The market is developed, but now requires trading in more than one or two brands, which was an accepted practice in the past. The modern customer needs to be surprised to select the goods of your company, and you are encouraged to use any civilized customer-attraction tools.

Natalia Droshneva

Based on www.torgrus.ru

The Russian dinnerware market capacity is hard to appraise since it is included in the general household goods market and is rarely distinguished. So, all calculations are approximate. The dinnerware traders think that the market occupies about one third of the household goods, which amounts to $0.7-1.3 billion of the total $2-4 billion p.a. One third of this turnover is concentrated in Moscow. This year the estimated dinnerware sector income increase shall be by 20-40%, with the half of this sum to be gained from the dishware. These changes mainly apply to regional, not Moscow, trade since regional development is gaining priority.