The ElectronicPartner cooperation increased sales in Germany in the financial year ended by 1 per cent. Central sales in the core and anchor market were around EUR 1.661 billion. “The shutdown of analogue TV and the European Football Championship ensured a highly successful first half of 2012. The second half of the year was – as we had forecast – a great challenge. We are all the more happy to have achieved such a sound result in our 75th anniversary year”, commented Dr. Jörg Ehmer, spokesman for the ElectronicPartner management board.
As one of the growth drivers again, the sector of telecommunications continued to rise. This sector includes the easyTel brand used by ElectronicPartner since October 2012 to offer its own prepaid rate. “easyTel is just one good example of the initiatives that we successfully launched last year”, says Dr. Jörg Ehmer. “Since 2013 offers few external promotional factors in an increasingly difficult market environment, we will continue to pursue our strategic orientation by building on these initiatives and our other new ideas.”
One of these new ideas involves an online trading facility: EP: brand retailers can incorporate an online shop on their own websites from summer onwards. This decentralised approach offered by the cooperation rounds off the range of services for EP:brand retailers. The primary intention is to allow adaptation to changing customer needs and expand target groups and sales channels.
This EP:online shop represents another component of the ElectronicPartner online strategy. Since the end of 2012, this strategy has included an investment, with the associated purchasing advantages, in the online mail-order company notebooksbilliger.de. Yet another new online service initiative is Plusanschluss.de which has enabled customers, since December of last year, to place orders with the participating companies for services like the connection of electronic devices.
Development of the brands
The three strategic brands of the cooperation each further consolidated their good market position in 2012. The specialist consumer-electronics store line MEDIMAX organised an extensive campaign to mark the European Football Championship and a special customer-advisory campaign “Wir beraten Deutschland” which led to permanent expansion of the brand. MEDIMAX also extended its online range of services: As well as reservation and collection services, the specialist store line began offering its customer-advisory skills online through “MEDIMAX Professionals”. 116 MEDIMAX specialist electronic stores with more than 2,000 employees exist at the present time. MEDIMAX will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2013. As well as an extensive promotional campaign, moderate growth in surface area is planned for the anniversary year.
This year, EP: will use a high-impact advertising campaign in the TV, print and online sectors to draw attention to the performance strengths of the specialist retailers. The core message will convey the high quality of the products on offer and the extraordinary skills of EP:specialist retailers when it comes to advising customers and providing a local service. Home networking will be another major theme on the agenda of the marketing line. EP: will be making consumers aware of the advantages of a networked home under the campaign title “HomeSmartHome”.
Der comTeam system house cooperation has been adding new strategic fields to its business model since last year. This included the establishment of comTeam ITServices GmbH which specialises in developing IT solutions for systems manufacturers, companies and cooperations. comTeam will be presenting another new business area at this year’s CeBIT technology trade fair: the betobia.de software platform. This provides a distribution channel for high-quality business software and is targeted at suppliers and users of B2B software.
Foreign business
Under the very difficult economic conditions still prevailing throughout Europe as a whole, foreign sales of ElecronicPartner were below those of the prior year. European sales in 2012 were EUR 453 million. In 2013, the cooperation will continue to rely strongly on strategic partnerships at European level that offer lasting success. Thus E-Square, the international cooperation and service group of which ElectronicPartner is a founding member, most recently welcomed two new members to its ranks. The companies Comfy in the Ukraine and WhiteAway in Denmark have now joined the cooperation.
ElectronicPartner completes a profitable financial year
The ElectronicPartner buying group can look back…