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May 17,2012

International specialized HVAC exhibition Climate World – 2012. The International HVAC Trade Fair.

Index » Archive » Climate World – 2009 » Opinions of the participants of “Climate World – 2009” on the crisis and the market
 

Opinions of the participants of “Climate World – 2009” on the crisis and the market

Beizman Mikhail Iosifovich, advertisement and marketing department head at ZAO “Euroclimate”:

“The crisis tells on everybody and all suppliers of air conditioners felt this. Prices expressed in dollars and euro are growing and pull the price at the domestic market. And everyone has to live with it, to raise prices, to search for the customer...

I think, we do it successfully. We raised our prices not in the proportion to the growth of dollar exchange rate, this increase was smaller and attracted the attention of our partners. And we prepared to the crisis situation beforehand”.

Kiryakov Leonid Fyodorovich, General Director of “Inrost” and “Nimal” companies, an owner of General Climate trademark

“Since air-conditioners are not articles of daily necessity, the strike on them was and will be very serious. I am sure that we will not reach the past-year sales level if the summer is not extremely hot. But if there is a regular Russian summer we all will have very serious losses. Even now these losses are very serious.

But, in this situation, one should not panic or scream “Everything’s lost!”, one should rather increase the activity understanding that while working ten times more, we will get 10 times less than in the past year. But we must do it. We must try to satisfy each customer, to make each prospective customer a real customer. We must activate sales managers, to improve service functions. We must be more aggressive, more active at the market. And all that multiplied by many times – and this will be our survival. Not success, but survival.

We are applying traditional measures, too. We have fired some (not more than 5%) people who were candidates to leave their places anyway. But I will apply all my effort to keep the very frame of my companies. To keep those supporting the company, to keep those who have sacrificed a lot themselves for the company, those, who brings and has always brought success to the company. I will be fighting for these people, despite any possible losses.

I think, that there is no fast exit from the current situation. This is going to take several years. And the matter is that we don’t have our own economy in the country. We are raw stuff suppliers and we depend on the prices for raw stuff. The crisis occurred not in our country nor here will this situation be resolved. And any activity at the Russian market will occur only in response to the world activity”.

Tabunschikov Yuriy Andreevich, the President of SP “ABOK”:

“There is no crisis. There is some reordering, some reorientation of vectors. And now we are going to shift from new construction to reconstruction in the field of energy saving, increase of heat efficiency, environment friendliness. I came to this myself independently, but our honored mayor said the same:

“Technical re-equipping, reservation and works optimization” are the three tasks of the greatest importance. And there should be no crisis itself. There is crisis in the field of new construction, but reconstruction remains the same. For this, we don’t need to borrow money from abroad, this can be made at the account of domestic assets. We don’t need high rates, like to construct a whole new town in a year or something like that. Everyone can find such assets. And it is possible to find money for this. It is not completely new construction where there is crazy amounts of money. And, financing from the budged is cut down, but still remains”.

Sverchkov Mikhail Glebovich, General Director of “Fifth Season” company:

“The main task to be solved now: how can we work? For example, how can we import equipment. And then... The recession will be rather serious, I even think that some companies will cease. Because, if, for instance, the overall fall is by 40%, then somebody would have 30%, and somebody – 60% of decrease. And the latter will be in a hard situation.

Today, we have to cut our expenses and wait for the market to activate. The company’s task now is to survive to the better time. To keep its main potential, to keep the ability to work for the time when the demand starts to raise. Each one makes up his own program”.

Treger Mikhail Yurievich, deputy General Director of “Fantom-Climate” company:

“What to do? Survive! It is clear, that all companies are decreasing their staff and salaries. And the task for at least the nearest year is to keep the core, to keep the structure developed through past years, to keep the relations with suppliers and customers to be able, after this hard time passes, to start growing at once and not to catch the gone train.

For us end of crisis means orders and funding for this orders. Because there is no money at all right now. That means, that nobody pays money. Money is not paid under the current contracts, it is not paid under newly executed contracts and new projects. So, physically, there is no money, it does not circulate. And the only thing that scares a lot is that this year there is possible a huge damping in the household segment in case of rather good summer. Because some companies think about tomorrow, while others, including large ones, live only today. And everybody has rather large balances at their warehouses”.

Ovhinnikov Sergey Grigorievick, “Ekoterm” company’s Director (Omsk):

“In the regions, there is a fall in construction industry, a very serious fall. There are objects which are 70-80% ready – they get finished. But there is nothing new. Or it is very little.

Will we handle a new season? Of course, we try to be optimistic. But everything is not that simple. I think that the fall will continue, it is not the bottom yet.

Back in our region we are conducing APIC’s policy, we are trying to unite the companies operating in our industry, attract new companies. We think that it is necessary to work in new complex conditions, it is necessary to unite our efforts, to work at objects together”.

Shestakova Natalia, Head of Daikin’s representative office in Russia:

“In my opinion, people took the expectative position. Everybody is looking at others waiting for what happens next. And the matter is not only the crisis of the construction industry. Ruble devaluation tells on everybody. We have never traded in rubles. But now we understand that prices increased for distributors and dealers, the situation worsened for them. And I think that there is a still situation because all people like sat down thinking what to do, what’s next. So far, we work as planned. Like the Government of the country we base our activities on short-term plans, we even don’t look a year ahead, we stick to the situation. Thanks to our flexible production lines located mainly in Europe, permits operation in this conditions and not to make distributors to make their orders 4 months in advance and to pay for such orders.

There is no sense in asking such company as ours about survival. And the crisis is not the first one, and, if you paid attention to the article in Forbes magazine about a hundred of the most vital companies in the world, 15% of them are Japanese companies, and Daikin is among those”.

Drobin Oleg Vladimirovich, Marketing Director of “Aeroprof” company:

“They tell us – “The crisis will touch each one of us, in some degree” – and this is rather fair, but what’s going on now is, rather, an “uncertainty situation”. “Due to the uncertainty, many projects and sites are closing, especially those with weak economical feasibility. So, we have a real reason for thinking the current situation over and making conclusions we don’t usually have time for in “peaceful times”. We have to live this time through, like it happened before. What’s good is that at the market, there will not remain any companies which are not specialists in our industry, those, for which this business sometimes was a tribute to the time”.

Yakovlev Pavel Nikolayevich, General Director of “DataKrat Climatic systems” company (Yekaterinburg):

“Our main achievement is that we are still alive and that I can come to this exhibition. To be serious, we had many changes during this time. We changed completely our view of conducting this business in these complex conditions. We had a serious restructuring, we had to decrease our staff. But, with all that, I consider it quite an achievement that we managed to keep all branches of our activity we performed before, each and every. We had not decreased the staff of the commercial department – we have just the same number of sellers as before. And because we started all these measures back in October, maybe because being a large company we started feeling this crisis earlier, but, nevertheless: all restructuring was finished by January. And we simply work on gaining our market share and take it from those who just started their restructuring.

We are just going to be twice as aggressive at the market. Before, we stuck to a more conservative strategy in respect of work at the market, we were satisfied with our own customers, but now, since our own customers don’t have an opportunity of investing into equipment, this year we are going to be quite aggressive at the market taking something from our competitors. The size of our business does not permit us to “drop” sales by more than 30%. Because otherwise we will have to restructure our business. That is why we are applying all efforts not to fall below a certain level. I think we will manage it. Everything we could do had been done before January”.

Georgiy Gennadievich Litvinchuk, Director of “Litvinchuk Marketing” company:

“Crisis: sales volumes are lower than in the past year. In addition, large balances of equipment at warehouses of dealers. And until they sell out everything they have they do not want to buy anything. But if we look at what they have we will see that all that are non-liquid goods, that can be selling for a long time. And the situation is much more complex than in 1999, when there was another crisis. This situation threaten very deep stagnation, collapse of, let’s say, 30% of companies working with the end-customer.

Of course, there will be some volumes due to reconstruction, but even lately it constituted 7 – 8% of the whole volume of construction works, so it is not going to be salvation for everybody even if it grows. Well, the situation may spur a little VRF market and semi-industrial split-systems market.

In household systems, the economy class will start crashing. Those who even previously barely scratched some money to purchase a cheap air-conditioner and wanted to buy it, cannot now purchase an air conditioner at all. And those who wanted to purchase a high-quality air-conditioner before – they will not purchase “no-name”, anyway. So, either they are not buying at all. Or they are taking two air conditioners instead of three”.

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