Small Domestic Appliances in Eastern Europe 2009 - The Growth Engine Starts to Stutter

After a dynamic 2008, Eastern Europe's growth engines have started to stutter. The year 2009 has seen a continuation of what had been seen up until September/October 2008, gradually shrinking but clearly positive growth rates. 

Eastern Europe's SDA markets (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, and Romania) have been diminishing at double digit rates and in the middle of the year they reached their lowest point. Overall, these markets recorded a 17.3% loss in volume and were down 23.7 % in value. That said, whilst remaining negative they did however recover to some extent until the end of the year. Slovakia or Romania had already returned to slightly positive growth rates in November/December in unit terms. The Russian and Ukrainian markets recovered gradually in the second half year, albeit still recorded negative growth rates.

Almost every product group suffered a loss in terms of turnover. Interspersed were a few segments able to present positive growth rates even in this challenging environment and which, allowing for the market size, affected the development of small domestic appliances in away. These include full automatic coffee machines in Poland and espresso portioned closed systems, which gave both the Czech and Polish markets a slight boost. Robot vacuum cleaners stimulated sales in terms of value despite a comparably small market share. Further increases were also evident in the sales of hair straighteners in Russia and hand blenders in both Hungary and Poland.