Giampaolo Herrmann, Eurovetrocap: "We don’t have any serious competitors in Russian market"

Giampaolo Herrmann, general manager of Eurovetrocap, told us about the new products, Russian clients and plans for the future.

Is it your first time in Russia or you’ve visited our country before?

We’ve already been here for six or seven times. I remember our firsy time at the Intercharm excibition when it was in Sokolniki. We started promotion of our products there, and for two years we had no Russian speaker in our team. First time it was a great problem for us – almost no one of the visitors new English. So at the second year we took part in exhibition with Russian-speaking partner and last year we started our relationship with Russian distributor Unipack Center. We understood that having a distributor here is the thing that helps us to win. And it really helped: this year we saw that there were less people at the Intercharm, but still we were lucky because all our Russian clients came to visit us and together with Unipack Center we could talk to them. Also some new clients arrived.

What advantages does the work with distributor give you?

First of all it’s good for our clients. Our clients are small and medium companies, and our main advantage for them is our possibility to produce any quantity of product. We start from one box if the client wants it. We also have a huge product range. It suits our target group, but they don’t like to import goods… maybe they are scared of the problems with customs, maybe they don’t believe that they can import even small quantity of product by normal price. That’s why work with distributor helps us to get more clients. Our sale level increased a lot because of working with Unipack Center and because we’ve done quite successful line of glass and plastic bottles.

What do you think about Russian market? Is it an important area of focus for Eurovetrocap?

Yes, especially for selling our glass solutions. We also have a range of plastic bottles, but glass is higher priority segment for us. We noticed that marked of high-quality glass jars and solutions for dispensing systems is not much competitive in Russia, and that’s what we want to sell. It’s not easy to find a client who would like to buy just a plastic bottle. Usually they ate buying plastic packaging as a part of a range: for example, they sell their products in glass and in plastic bottles with the same shape and size. So what we are able to sell is both glass and plastic solutions.

What products are the most popular among Russian clients?

Principally high-quality glass, because it can be easily decorated and customized. The cylindrical range is the most popular. Even if several clients buy the jar of the same shape and size but with individual decoration, they will look absolutely different. One of our advantages is the possibility to offer 10-50 different closures to each type of jar. So we have products for high market and for mass-market. Our sale level in Russia increased a lot but mainly because we’ve done quite successful line of glass and plastic bottles. That’s why in spite of the difficult economic situation we feel quite steadily.

What companies do you reckon as your competitors in Russian market?

As I already said, we don’t have many of them in glass segment. But there is quite serious competition in segment of plastic bottles: some Russian manufacturers have the same products in their lines – maybe it is coincidence, maybe in some cases they just copy European products. Everyone can make a mould for a plastic bottle, turn on an electric machine and start the production. Investments in a glass bottle production are much higher and it is also the reason why we don’t have much competition in that kind of production. We have some local Russian competitors, but the main competition is between us and the other European companies. The difference between Eurovetrocap and our competitors is that our range is the widest and because of the fact that we stock all the products we are able to supply the goods in a very short time.

Did you make any newly-designed products this year?

Yes, the very new thing is our airless pump. We were proud to show the new Nina Airless pack range to our clients. This is plastic airless pack in 15, 30 and 50ml sizes. Where are two variants of pack finishing -matte and glossy. The pump can also be glossy or matte and we can make any kind of decoration of the bottle: it can be spraying, metallization, varnishing or whatever. The new addition to Nina Airless range is a very powerful pump which we develop together with our Italian partners. It’s very innovative and helps to use the entire product inside. Ladies now that sometimes it’s very hard to get the product from a tube or from a bottle with simple pump when the product is almost finished. With our powerful airless even a drop won’t be left. And again our clients can make a request for just a one box while our competitors start working from thousands.