CITILINK – New MERLION Retail Project

MERLION already has one retail project – federal network of computer shops “POSITRONICA”, which is successfully developing today and has recently entered Moscow market. Unlike “POSITRONICA”, CITILINK will have quite another retail format and will be oriented at more advanced computer audience.

Today, CITILINK is a full-fledged retail project with two servicing methods: an internet shop with the daily customer flow of over 300 people and a shop with installed electronic terminals.
Major target audience of the new shop will be advanced users clearly knowing all required features of the product they need.

CITILINK business project will be focused at working both with individuals and representatives of SMB (Small & Medium business) wholesale market, for whom special rooms for presentations and registration of transactions have been equipped in the shop.

In MERLION management’s opinion, the selected trading format (discounter) will fit perfectly well to this period. “Thoughts of creation of one more retail network appeared at the very beginning of 2008. At that moment, nobody even supposed that a time would come when almost all retail computer market players would have to reconsider their price limits. Unfortunately, in the majority of cases it damaged own profits. Our discounter was opened exactly in such difficult period. But we have no doubts that the project will stay alive and will successfully develop, because we have selected a very successful commercial format, a discounter. Due to it, today we are ready to offer high quality products at low prices to our customers”, - commented Vyacheslav Simonenko, the General Director of MERLION.

CITILINK products will have prices below the market ones for approximately 20 percent. Such attractive price proposal was first of all formed due to direct access to manufacturers at the expense of the project belonging to MERLION company. Besides, it was favored by absence of costs for servicing personnel and logistic procedures. All products will come directly from the manufacturer to CITILINK warehouse via MERLION.

Investments into the project creation comprise about 4.5 million dollars. The planned repayment term will not exceed two years.

Within five years, MERLION plans to open some more discounters in Russian cities with the population over a million people.

The project is headed by Sergey Kovalenko.

Mr. Kovalenko  was born on September 23, 1974. Graduated from Moscow Physical and Technical Institute on Speciality “Radio Equipment and Cybernetics”. Since 1995 he has been working in computer business.