MERLION electronics distributor included packaged coffee in its range of wholesale products. This appears to be the first food commodity within the company’s catalog over 26 years. The distributor hopes that customers will be buying coffee along with coffee machine filters and other home appliances.
MERLION sells coffee
MERLION a large home appliances and electronics distributor started selling coffee. This appears to be the first food commodity within the company’s catalog over 26 years of its existence.
To a question asked by CNews why it started MERLION’s press center replied that the company took into account the practice of large retailers to put coffee packages on the shelves along with small home appliances, filters and other accessories for coffee machines. MERLION as a company distributes such products as cleaners and filters for coffee makers and coffee machines. Therefore the distributor hopes that its active partners will purchase coffee along with home appliances.
Coffee products
MERLION’s range of products includes instant, ground, grain and capsular coffee from large manufacturers such as Carte Noire, Dolce Gusto, Jacobs Monarch, L`OR, Nescafe and Tassimo. At the moment negotiations are underway with other manufacturers. Coffee is supplied in vacuum packs, glass jars or cans. Weight of packs varies from 250 to 800 g.
MERLION assures that the company fulfills all the manufacturers’ requirements regarding transportation and storage of coffee including certain temperature and humidity control in storage and in transit as well as usage of special protective shipping packaging.
Bank and cash service equipment
In addition, on its website MERLION announced that it was going to distribute bank and cash service equipment. The distributor has already signed direct contracts with Russian developer Dors and large global bank equipment manufacturer Magner. Relying on the strong position of these partners in their segment MERLION intends to be among two-three leaders in wholesale bank and cash service equipment market.
The first products by Dors and Magner to be sold by MERLION are banknote counters and currency detectors. These brands can be already found in the company's catalog. In addition, MERLION’s new partners make detecting equipment for banknotes and documents with protection elements, banknote packagers, bank deposit sells and safes, functional add-on devices to ATMs, bank terminals etc.
What MERLION does
Russian company MERLION founded in 1992 distributes various categories of products including computer, digital and home appliances, office accessories, office furniture and business gifts.
MERLION is one of the largest broadline distributors in Russia as per Forbes rating “200 largest private companies in Russia 2017”, the company is the 35th in terms of revenues equal to 191.8 billion rubles in 2016, which is 24.7 billion rubles less than the same revenues for the previous year.
MERLION's headquarters is in Krasnogorsk, as of 2016 the total number of employees was 6.8 thousand people as of 2016.
RAEX-600 rating by Expert agency following the results of 2016 puts MERLION to number 60 among Russian companies with annual revenues equal to 191.8 billion rubles, in this case the company's revenues were estimated to be 167.1 billion rubles in 2015.
According to MERLION’s data the company operates over 650 brands. The distributor has concluded over 400 direct distribution contracts. MERLION’s partnership network in Russia and CIS involves around 7.5 thousand companies. MERLION runs sales offices in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don, and Samara.
Production and retail
Apart from distribution MERLION is engaged in retail sales through its nationwide retailer POSITRONICA and CITILINK e-tailer, moreover the latter positions itself in the market as a discounter. Moreover, MERLION owns and runs the technical center MERLION Engineering, which specializes in support of design equipment and SW as well as provides additional services. MERLION also owns a chain of IT service centers - so called IT clinics.
In 2002 MERLION founded a company to manufacture computer equipment under iRU brand. As the company says in terms of sales iRU is among five leaders in the Russian desktop computer market along with global vendors. In addition, MERLION manufactures office accessories, Business accessories and office furniture under “Bureaucrat” brand.
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