This year was a full one for businessman Dan Ostahie. The expansion of the Altex and Media Galaxy retail networks continued to the point when the company owned by the renowned entrepreneur opened its 100th store in Oradea.
The significant increase of consumption in Romania, due mainly to the considerable growth of wages, meant a 20 percent growth in turnover for Altex in 2017 compared to the previous year, up to approximately EUR 718 million. The store network posted a profit that exceeded EUR 10 million in 2017, a 22 percent growth compared to 2016.
In 2018, Dan Ostahie started some strategic investments for Altex and Media Galaxy, related to the warehousing segment. The businessman will develop a new logistics center near Bucharest, in Dragomiresti Vale, on a 15-hectare land that was acquired on the free market for EUR 5.5 million. The new logistic hub is made up of two main warehousing buildings with a total surface of approximately 90,000 sqm and 46,000 sqm of external logistic platforms. The total investment goes up to EUR 37 million, with financing contracted from EximBank for the first part of the project. The second part of the logistics project will be finalised in 2019 and needs an investment of approximately EUR 15 million. Recently, the businessman decided to make a EUR 1.2 million capital injection from his own logistics and distribution company.
Another achievement for Dan Ostahie in 2018 was the creation of a joint venture with Taiwanese producer Promate, who makes a wide range of IT&C accessories, and will distribute the brand in Central and Eastern Europe. For the next 2-3 years, the businessman expects a turnover of around EUR 15 million for Promate Europe and revenues of up to EUR 50 million for the following 5 years.
How everything began
Dan Ostahie had the courage, in 1991, to launch a business project which he developed over time and which was able to resist both the competition and the economic crisis. Born in Piatra Neamt, Dan Ostahie graduated the Petru Rares high school, and found himself in Bucharest during the 1989 Revolution, while he was a student at the Electronics and Telecommunications University, which he graduated in 1991. In several of the interviews he’s given over the years, the businessman spoke about the fact that 1991 represented his debut in business as, in the fall of that year, he started the television repairs activity together with his sister, her husband and a few friends from university.
In the context of a market that was hungry for home appliances, especially colour TVs, after the communist years, the entrepreneur found the perfect opportunity for a business in the field. More specifically, at that time, TVs were sold in the same stores as clothing items or other goods, and Ostahie seized the moment to develop his business.
But the decisive moment for the business was a trip to Switzerland, when he managed to sign a contract with a company specialising in buy-backs and recovery of television sets. He borrowed USD 10,000 from a bank using his parents’ home as collateral, and made the first transport of second-hand TVs from Switzerland. The TVs were repaired in a 500 sqm warehouse, and then they sold like hotcakes in consignment stores. Later, the Altex network developed nationally.
