Brand failure: Univers’All retailer throws its brand equity to the toilet

I’m sure many of you bought from this Romanian retailer and heard/saw that it closed in the last months many of its supermarkets.

Univers’All used to be one of the most interesting retailers in Romania – although it was a Romanian business, although the advertising was dull, it provided its customers a lovely shopping experience. Some examples: it had a ‘loyalty’ card that was quite nice (customers received money-off vouchers at home each month when they used the card), locations were very modern (the one in Bucharest Unirii plaza was extraordinary), the staff seemed to be well-trained – at the cash register they even paid 1-hour of your parking ticket if you bought from the location downtown. Quite nice from consumers point of view. Nice, but inefficient – since they’re now history.

I found an article a couple of days ago that talks about Univers’All graveyard (its bankruptcy procedure) and how the owners are selling each location separately. I found this to be a lousy financial move because they simply threw the young and daring brand “Univers’All” to the garbage: locations were sold piece by piece, disregarding the achieved equity.

What would’ve been a better selling strategy? I think that first they should’ve tried solving the debts that are settled now in court by selling a few stores and stocks. Afterwards they could’ve sell Univers’All as a smaller network, but this way pushing to sell also brand’s equity – so transaction’s total value should’ve been significantly higher.

But at the same time I’m thinking that maybe for the stockholders this extra money was not too important or maybe the available time for this ‘resuscitating’ scenario simply did not exist.

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