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Bezvavlasy is a company that sells hair cosmetics and hair care products. This year, it is achieving record results and is planning further expansion into European markets. The second largest domestic retailer of hair cosmetics reports record sales growth in the first three quarters of this year. They grew by almost 44 percent year-on-year to 495 million crowns. Profit before taxation compared to the same period last year grew by 66 percent to 34 million crowns.
It is also worth mentioning the growth of the Bezvavlasy e-shop in the Czech Republic, which recorded a year-on-year increase in sales by more than a fifth in the third quarter alone, compared to the entire Czech e-commerce market, which, according to Heurek data, recorded an eleven percent decrease in the same period.
When the owners of Bezvavlasa, Aleš Hudeček and František Novotný, wanted to support the further growth of the company, they decided last September to enter the Start market of the Prague Stock Exchange, intended for stock exchange “beginners”, where they offered investors a 23 percent stake in the company. They got over 112 million crowns for its sale. Over time it turned out to be a good move. From the subscription price of 490 crowns, the value of one share has risen by 40 percent to the current 690 crowns. Since the beginning of the year alone, the shares have achieved 70 percent growth with a market capitalization of 690 million crowns.
Photo: Trading View, List of Reports
Bezvavlasa’s shares have appreciated by more than 70 percent on the Start market of the Prague Stock Exchange since the beginning of this year.
The road to a billion turnover
For the whole of this year, Bezvavlasy expects sales to grow to a total of 700 to 732 million crowns, which would represent a year-on-year increase of 37 percent. In the future, the company is aiming for a billion dollar turnover, which it would like to achieve within five years. According to information from SZ Byznys, the acquisition that the company is completing should also help with this. Its announcement should come before the end of this year.
As margins generally decrease over time in a highly competitive market, the company plans to continue to expand its portfolio with, among other things, its own brands. “We already have a certain size and our client base, so it’s easier for us to promote our own products. With them, we can differentiate ourselves and defend our margins,” explains company co-owner František Novotný.
From modest local startup beginnings, the company has grown into an international player with the ambition to operate in Western markets as well. In addition to the Czech Republic, the company currently operates in Slovakia and Hungary and plans to expand to Romania and Croatia this year.
“We want to replicate our success in other countries. We intend to enter there as a specialist in hair cosmetics, which will target hairdressers and through them expand its reach to other consumers. It’s a strategy that has proven itself, and we can quickly turn it into positive numbers,” says company co-founder Aleš Hudeček.
Within five years, the company would like to operate in more than ten European markets and achieve long-term sales of up to three billion crowns. Also for this purpose, this year it opened its own new warehouse in Bor near Tachova, which currently handles approximately 30 percent of the company’s turnover. For this, it received a subsidy from the European Structural and Investment Funds in the total amount of 14.7 million crowns, which is less than half of the total expenditure on the investment. The management plan for this year did not conservatively calculate the income from this subsidy, so the company will have more money in the account than originally planned.
According to Hudeček, a successful transition to completely own warehouse management is currently essential for the company. “We expect the simplification and acceleration of our entire logistics as well as savings of approximately five million per year. At the same time, we are completing the nearly two-year development of our own e-shop platform, thanks to which we will be able to enter new markets already this year,” he told SZ Byznys. “We still see the current year-on-year growth of almost 50 percent as growth below our potential,” he adds.
Notino continues to be the largest online store with perfumes and cosmetics not only in the Czech Republic, but also in the whole of Europe, whose annual sales are in the tens of billions of crowns. The turnover of the European number one in the last fiscal year, which lasted from last May to this April, exceeded one billion euros, i.e. more than 23 billion crowns. The company did not disclose its net profit, but in the previous year it amounted to 519 million crowns.
