Rautakesko to open Russia's 11th K-rauta in Tula

RAUTAKESKO LTD PRESS RELEASE 05.03.2010 AT 10.30 1(1)

Rautakesko will open its 11th K-rauta in Russia tomorrow, 6 March. The new store will open in Tula, a rapidly developing industrial city of 600,000 inhabitants. Tula is situated on the river Upa, some 170 kilometres south from Moscow.

The new K-rauta is located in Tula's retail and business centre. The area is undergoing rapid development with several housing estates being built around it. The store is a modern and diversified, service-oriented department store for building, home decoration and gardening products.

The store has showrooms displaying total interior decoration solutions to facilitate customers' planning and decision-making, and to give them new ideas. Customers are offered planning and installation services, and a variety of others, such as home delivery on the day of purchase.

‑ Shopping in the store is easy, because all products for the home can be bought at the same time and at the same place. Customer service is emphasized and, for example, interior designer's services are free for customers, says Mikko Pasanen, Rautakesko's Country Director for Russia.

Rautakesko now has nine K-rauta stores in the St. Petersburg area. The store in Tula is the K-rauta chain's second store in Moscow's catchment area. The first opened in Jaroslavl in spring 2009.

- Now it's a good time to expand the K-rauta chain in Russia. Our experiences from St. Petersburg and Jaroslavl provide insight in the development of the chain business also in other areas. We'll open the next store in Kaluga, south-west from Moscow in early April, says Pasanen.

K-rauta Tula in figures:

·        Total area 13,100 m²

·        Indoor sales area 7,700 m²

·        Outdoor sales area 5,400 m², of which 2,500 m² covered

The store carries a selection of more than 30,000 different building, home improvement and garden products.

Photos of the store can be downloaded from http://aineistopankki.kesko.fi/kesko.en.

Further information:
Mikko Pasanen, Country Director, Russia, Rautakesko Ltd, tel. +358 40 743 6665
Aleksander Rudenko, Managing Director, ZAO Stroymaster, tel. + 7 812 326 92 31 (in Russian)

Kesko (www.kesko.fi) is a retail specialist whose stores offer quality to the daily lives of consumers. Kesko has about 2,000 stores engaged in chain operations in the Nordic and Baltic countries, Russia, and Belarus.