Russia’s MTS expands retail chain 22% in 2015 to 5,166 stores

MOSCOW, Mar 18 (PRIME) -- Russian mobile operator MTS expanded its retail chain by 21.7% in 2015 to 5,166 outlets, the company said in a statement Friday.

“Over the year, including the relocation of MTS stores to spots with higher buyer traffic, the company opened more than 1,000 outlets. In December, expansion rates hit a record number with more than five new MTS stores launched every day,” the company said.

Of the total, the number of stores working under the franchising model grew 26.8% to 1,681 units.

“We boost our retail business as a response to aggressive activities of competitors in raising the market share via controlled chains. In essence, our retail chain is our main channel of sales,” MTS’s press secretary Dmitry Solodovnikov said.

MTS ended partnership with Euroset, owned by its main rivals MegaFon and VimpelCom, in 2014 and stopped selling contracts and accept payments via retailer Svyaznoy in the middle of 2015.

“It’s important for us to have a widely spread chain to implement our strategy: thanks to a sharp decrease in prices we attract more buyers to our channel, and, as a consequence, we fill our network with smartphones, subscribe clients for mobile Internet, ensure a transfer of existing subscribers to bundle tariff plans,” Solodovnikov said.

“We see the strategy brining fruit: subscribers, who join us via this channel, are more loyal and consume more services, including financial ones.”

End