Growth for Petrovitch virtual business

Last year Petrovitch, a Russian builders’ merchant headquartered in St Petersburg, achieved sales of nearly a billion roubles (approx. € 25 mio) in online trading, six times as much as 2011. This amounts to some six per cent of the company’s total sales. The target of two billion roubles set for this year is as much as ten per cent of the projected sales total. The company explains the increase through its having redistributed the advertising budget away from the construction industry’s print media towards banner and context advertising in the net. Surveys have revealed that over 90 per cent of regular customers obtain their information through the internet these days. Since the average sales transaction takes only two minutes online, compared with eight to ten minutes in-store, it should be possible to reduce organisational costs by around ten per cent.