For the burgeoning middle class, investments of choice range from electronics to gold jewelry. Evroset, Russia’s largest mobile-phone chain, is telling people to buy anything they can.
“It’s better to feel happy that you own something than to fear losing the money you have earned,” Chairman Yevgeny Chichvarkin says in a letter posted at 5,200 Evroset stores. “If you need a car, buy a car! If you need an apartment, buy an apartment! If you need a fur coat, buy a fur coat!”
Sales at Technosila, the third-biggest consumer electronics chain, have doubled since September as customers rush to swap rubles for flat-screen TVs and laptops, spokeswoman Nadezhda Senyuk said by phone from Moscow, where the company is based.
Jewelry sales are also accelerating, particularly items made of gold and diamonds, said Vladimir Stankevich, advertising director at Adamas, Russia’s third-largest jewelry retailer.
Yes, and they will say that the strong consumer spending signals the end of the recession.