Romania leads export in CEE: CBRE appoints Carmen Ravon as Head of Retail Occupiers for the entire CEE region

CBRE, the world’s leading real estate advisory market, continues to strengthen its activities in all ten countries of the CEE region and appoints Carmen Ravon, one of the most respected Romanian retail experts, who currently heads the retail team of CBRE Romania, to coordinate the retailer’s expansion in the entire CEE region as Head of Retail Occupiers.

With more than 15 years of experience in retail real estate, Carmen has successfully and repeatedly lease contracts with top international users such as: Peek & Cloppenburg, Inditex Group, Decathlon, H&M, C&A, Hervis, LC Waikiki, DM, Lidl, Sephora. completed, Adidas, Mango, Jysk, KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks, office shoes and many more. Carmen and her team advised important retailers such as Victoria’s Secret, Burger King, Nespresso, Michael Kors, Lagardere and Philip Morris on the implementation of portfolio optimizations and also coordinated the letting processes for new shopping centers and retail park centers, refurbishments and new leases of existing shopping centers in all major cities in Romania .

“The recent upheavals in the retail sector with a focus on e-commerce have led to an additional need for advice on the part of companies, which not only requires in-depth specialist knowledge, but also creativity and leadership. Carmen has outstanding expertise and the ability to foresee market trends and she will focus on building and strengthening our business relationships with retail users who have their presence across all retail formats in 10 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and in strong collaboration with our industrial and logistics structure. ”commented Andreas Ridder, Managing Director of CBRE in the CEE region.

Carmen Ravon is also the artisan of the new omnichannel line of business, with CBRE Romania being the first real estate company to introduce omnichannel services to help retailers expand in the logistics sector. In her new CEE role, Carmen will also work closely with the Industrial & Logistics teams as the e-commerce development involves investments in the supply chain and logistics in all CEE markets.

“Our Romanian team has been exporting leading positions in CEE in various real estate sectors for many years and has repeatedly proven that Romania is a real talent pool. The renewed promotion of a team member in CEE makes me proud that CBRE Romania has beautiful minds, great knowledge and highly valued leadership models and that logistics are blurred and a new approach is a must, ”said Răzvan Iorgu, Managing Director of CBRE Romania

Carmen is a graduate of the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, specializing in Finance & Banking, and holds a Management Diploma from the Open University Business School of London. She is fluent in Romanian, English and French, is involved in several business associations and chambers of commerce and is also one of the most sought-after speakers for major real estate events.

“We are experiencing challenging times and retail is changing faster than ever, from shopping center experiences to e-commerce expansion. Just to have a global perspective, ecommerce penetration will grow online sales to $ 3.9 trillion by 2025, which is four times more than in 2015. With the knowledge of the CEE retail teams, we will support retail users in making profitable decisions for their business, right up to expansion into CEE regions that benefit from a stable economic climate, favorable tax conditions, a well-trained workforce and, above all, increasing purchasing power. I have seen all of the retail users who stepped in on the basis of strategic expansion plans in CEE countries have been very successful and are now trying to open up logistics facilities in the CEE region in view of the interruptions in the supply chain to enable offline and online sales to support “, explains Carmen Ravon, Head of Retail Occupiers CEE.

After weaker retail spending results in 2020, Oxford Economics is forecasting annual growth for all CEE countries in 2021 and 2022. Average retail spending growth for the CEE region is projected to be 5% in 2021 and 3% in 2022 the highest increases in 2021 (over 8% YonY) are Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia. In 2022 it will be the Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovakia (more than 6% YonY).

While the prime rent in most of the CEE countries was subject to special scrutiny for both shopping centers and shopping centers in 2020, it remained relatively stable in 2021, when we saw continued pressure, especially on the location in the shopping streets. In the third quarter of 2021, the Czech Republic dominated the CEE retail market with the highest prime rents, followed by Hungary and Poland. On the contrary, the lowest levels were recorded in the Baltic States and Bulgaria.

We continue to expect significant pressure on rents, higher discounts and premiums as well as flexibility in the rental period until the pandemic has sufficiently subsided and the market recovers.

In Romania, the modern retail inventory is expected to exceed the 4.00 million mark. m² barrier, will reach 4.10 million m² by the end of 2021. Taking into account the projects currently under construction and planned, the total amount should increase to 4.30 million by the end of 2022. m², expected volume that will restore investor and developer confidence in traditional retail

Romania’s modern retail inventory reached 3.98 million. m² at the end of the third quarter of 2021 and combines both shopping centers and retail parks as retail formats. Given the new offering and the new offering in the future, the trend of developers towards the specialist retail format can be observed, a trend that began in 2020 and is shaped by the regulations imposed by the pandemic.

Nonetheless, e-commerce positions itself in retailers’ business and customer preferences and is expected to mesh with traditional ways of buying, and it is only up to retailers how they incorporate the omnichannel approach into their sales strategies.