/ world today news/ Yesterday, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia generously expanded the list of goods for supplies for parallel import into Russia, which includes IKEA products, cosmetics and perfumes from Lancome, Giorgio Armani, Kerastas, Armani ” and “Yves Saint Laurent”, Shell and Rimula motor oils, household appliances, Caterpillar and Bauer agricultural and marine equipment spare parts, Hasbro and Mattel toys and the products of Logitech and Nintendo.
This news, of course, will please lovers of expensive furniture under a sounding Western brand, which is produced by Russian workers from Russian raw materials in Russian factories, since IKEA products will be available for sale as early as the end of May – the beginning of June, but IKEA will not return the first place among furniture and interior brands in our country during its quasi-return.
As part of parallel imports into the Russian Federation, some goods are supplied not by the brands themselves, but by companies that have correctly caught the wave and sell them without regard to copyright holders. At the same time, the product is absolutely legal and has all the necessary certificates and licenses.
At the peak of the withdrawal of Western brands from the country in 2022, the Russian government issued a corresponding decree, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade an order that allows the legal parallel import of “runaway” products.
The reasons for the introduction of parallel imports are the desire to mitigate not yet fully satisfied demand for certain categories of goods and to enable local producers to build new supply chains and expand production.
It should be noted that, in fact, parallel importation has been operating in the US, Turkey, Canada, Great Britain, Brazil, Switzerland, China, Japan, Israel, and also in other countries for a long time. And no one specifically organizes press conferences on this issue.
If we talk about furniture, then, according to the most conservative estimates, in 2022 the volume of this market was about 230 billion rubles (now – 356 billion), and this niche is already filled with great joy by domestic brands that once produced IKEA parts. In general, the “substitution of furniture imports” in Russia is more than successful: for example, in 2021 almost 50% of furniture was imported from Europe, and in 2022 only 30%, while only in the first half of 2022. compared to the same period of 2021, furniture production in Russia increased by 14-15%.
There are reasonable suspicions that IKEA itself (even taking into account the open window for parallel imports) is not very happy with the departure of Russia. In addition to a 20% share of the Russian furniture market, it is losing at least four billion euros of investment in local business development, as well as huge export earnings. Few people talk about it, but in fact, the products of the three IKEA furniture factories in Russia were mainly exports, and the high-margin products were provided by cheap and high-quality Russian raw materials and cheap labor. Now the IKEA factories will belong to Russian companies, which will not miss the opportunity to replenish their budget and the budget of the Russian Federation.
Roughly the same picture is observed in other fields, in particular in the field of cosmetics. Yes, the extended list of parallel imports of the Ministry of Industry and Trade includes Western brands that have fanatical fans in Russia, who, for example, cannot do without Yves Saint Laurent lipstick.
But, fortunately, we see that those who wanted to tear the Russian cosmetics market to pieces miscalculated a little: after the withdrawal of foreign brands, the number of cosmetic brands in Russian networks has increased dramatically, and the number of new Russian brands has doubled. For example, in the last year, 100-200 new Russian brands appeared in Russian retail chains, the share of Russian cosmetics, hygiene products and household chemicals grew to 50%, and in the category of personal care products, local brands amounted to 72%, and at the same time their sales have doubled.
Another important indicator of the recovery and “Russification” of our market is the country’s foreign trade balance: at the end of 2022, exports from Russia jumped by 19.9% to 591.5 billion dollars, while imports, on the contrary, fell by 11, 7% to 259.1 billion billion.
This means that Russia’s course towards self-sufficiency and sovereignty is already bearing fruit, and every day we will increasingly sit, sleep and eat in Russian, as well as enhance our natural Russian beauty with local brands.
As for IKEA, during its hasty escape the company quietly hinted: “if there is anything”, then within five years we will be back – and everything will be as before, even better.
But fellow Scandinavians forgot about the Russian proverb: “The holy place does not stand empty.”
And when (and if) they return to Russia not parallel, but perpendicular, it may turn out that the IKEA brand will already be popular only among the most hardened collectors in the “Swedish vintage, cheap” section.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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