The largest book retailer in Russia, the combined chain Chitai-Gorod and Bukvoed, will be forced to close 330 of its 696 stores across the country due to restrictions on non-food retail operations, the press service of the chain told Kommersant.
“Now the largest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as 20 more regions have announced the introduction of a lockdown. Apparently, this number may increase. For us, at the moment, this is the closure of about 330 stores, which is almost half of the chain. Plus a delay in the opening of new objects. These are serious multimillion-dollar losses, ”the network said. The company expects to “reach a compromise” with its rental partners regarding payment for closing days. According to a network representative, the online store will operate during the lockdown, but it will not be able to compensate for the loss of retail sales, since many buyers are used to picking up online orders from bookstores.
Earlier, Russian book publishers estimated their losses due to the closure of specialized book retail in Moscow and other cities at hundreds of millions of rubles. The weekly lockdown will reduce the growth of the book market by 2–3%, the Eksmo-AST Group of Companies predicted. Before the announcement of the new restrictions, the group expected the book market to grow in 2021 to 99 billion rubles, which is 3% more than in 2019 and 18% more than last year.
.