Saratov, 15 June 2023 – X5 Group (“X5” or the “Company”, LSE and MOEX ticker: FIVE), a leading Russian food retailer, announces the opening of its first hard discounters under the Chizhik brand in the Saratov Region. On Thursday, the retailer opened four stores in Saratov (on 29/35 Shelkovichnaya Street, 49 Moskovskaya Street, 17 Lisina Street, and 5 Raskova Street) as well as one store in Balakovo (on 112 Shevchenko Street).
The product assortment at each store features approximately 750 SKUs, including around 400 private label items that have already become popular with Chizhik customers. These include Svetaevo, Verner, Shchedry God, Greenola, Axl, Tafo and others.
Chizhik’s business model is based on offering a small but sought-after selection of products at attractive prices. The retailer delivers low prices for its customers thanks to business process optimisation and relentless in-store cost cutting, while the large share of private labels in its assortment enables Chizhik to offer only those products that meet its high standards of quality and charge fair prices and markups. Chizhik also stands out for its unique Nado Uspet (“Catch the Price”) zone that highlights the best deals in household, kitchen, garden goods, and other products – all in one place.
The new stores will be supplied from Chizhik’s distribution centre in Volgograd with shipments from both nationwide and local suppliers. Going forward, the retailer will launch a separate distribution centre in the Saratov Region to supply local stores.
Chizhik has already created 115 jobs in the Saratov Region and expects to bring the total number of new jobs created for local communities to more than 370 by the end of the year. The Saratov Region is the 13th region in the retail chain’s footprint. Chizhik plans to open 22 more stores in the region before the end of June, aiming to bring the total store count in the region to up to 55 stores by the year-end.
Currently, Chizhik has more than 700 stores across 13 regions of Russia [1], with plans to open more than a thousand stores in 2023.
[1] Moscow, the Voronezh, Volgograd, Sverdlovsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Samara, Chelyabinsk, and Yaroslavl Regions, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Republic of Udmurtia, and the Perm Territory.