Rodolfo Pollini
rdpa2005@gmail.com

What summary do you do 2024, a year that we are going through with two different semesters but not all must have impacted in the same way?

It was a very difficult year. As you said, there were two different periods, the first semester marked by the fall of sales, recession, devaluation and loss of working capital. Us at the end of December 2023 We had an important fiscal credit amount that was retained and liquefied for the devaluation and we could just recover it in September 2024, with a very large loss. Given the impossibility of paying imports, we had losses of shipments and delays, but in the second semester the demand was recovered and we could embark and produce again. It was also a very difficult year for industrial companies such as ours for the opening of imports. We had to aggiornar and change our product portfolio.

Last year it was particularly hard for High Ticket products, how did you affected you in small appliances, with a much lower average ticket, for example, than what televisions or white line have?

The small appliance market was recovered in the second half of last year but it was not so with seasonal products, because the strong heat was very late, only in the second half of this year, and it was a really bad season. The sale of small appliances in the last quarter of 2024 was significant but it was not what happened with cell phones, white line or televisions.

Did that recovery take the numbers to what they were in 2023 or did you recover only part of the lost in the first semester?

2024 did not recover the figures of 2023, but there was an important recovery. In the second semester of 2023 there was a lot of speculative purchase from consumers, due to the imminent devaluation that could occur and the enormous gap between the official and financial dollar, so the consumption of that quarter had totally abnormal figures. We did not reach those figures but a good part was recovered.

In that speculative purchase there were also differences between the channel, which tried to put its capital in foreign exchange when it stocking products, and what the public could demand, which made some segments of the retail in 2024 had a lot of stock.

In the first semester of 2024 that happened: the trade had a lot of stock and the Sell OUT fell terribly until April, between 30% and 40% compared to the first quarter of 2023 and in some cases 50% and 60%.

How did you see in that scenario of falling sales to companies? Because in the midst of such an impact you have to take care of working capital, profitability cannot be greatly affected by lowering prices or disregarding the weight of fixed and financial costs. A quite complicated balance.

Each company did what they could. The difficulty was huge due to the blockade to pay imports. An industrial company like ours had to face the challenge of reconverting before the arrival of imports and to try to maintain business activity and sales, continue manufacturing, continue importing supplies and cancel the previous debts. It was one of the toughest moments of the last 20 years in our industry.

Following this impact, did you notice changes in demand type? I mean that this recovery may have been more quantitative than qualitative, for the search by the consumer, with a purchasing power also The great development of electronic commerce had already changed the stage.

The development of the e-commerce made the traditional commercialization change a lot and we do not know the dimension of the change that we are going to have industrial companies and retail. We also see with concern the entry of merchandise into irregular conditions, with sub -billing and that anyone can bring and sell anything through social networks. These imports breach safety standards, the only thing that is prioritized are low prices and are entering products with 204, industrial steel, which contains heavy metals. We have to face the opening of the market and also illegality. or people who pay less taxes or avoid payment. I think that in the next few years we will live these situations more and then the market will be ordered.

How do you imagine that Argentine of more open markets?

I think we have to look at the case of Chile, which has open markets for three decades and the consumer has already gone through the experience we are living in Argentina. In our field, in Chile there is a strong presence of national brands They have no competition and foreign brands are losing positioning, because products do not develop in Chile but abroad, without taking into account the need for the local market. And there are the big chains that make their imports and have not killed the brands that develop the products attending the needs of consumers.

All this we are analyzing also occurs in a very changing and complex international environment. Do you think that US tariff policy can lead to much more arrival from foreign products, from China for example?

The first time, (Donald) Trump won the elections with a campaign of strong return from the industries within the United States, and initiated a commercial war against China. What the Chinese did was export through countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia or Laos, which became great factories, just like Vietnam. There was an exodus from China's factories to those countries, who received China's inputs to manufacture and export to the United States. China's exports to the United States went down but China's global volume in world trade rose, because China never stopped selling to the United States, which cannot live regardless of cell phones or computers from China. I think there will be a very strong pressure of Chinese products that want to enter the Argentine market and all these countries are devaluing the coins to gain competitiveness and overcome these tariffs imposed by the United States.

How much did you found Goldmund?

I founded it in November 2003, almost 22 years ago.

How many lines and how many products make up the company's operation?

We have four categories of products: small appliances, electrical heaters, ventilation and white line, which in total add up to 300 skus.

Is the operation equally distributed in the four lines or does it have more participation within the total?

It is even. We have continuous sales products and seasonal products and against season, with commercial plans appropriate to market behaviors.

I imagine that, depending on the climate, plan the production of seasonal products must have become a big problem for the industry.

This is terrible, because these climatic changes greatly affect the predictability of the business. There is no pre -season and it becomes very difficult to foresee, because for all seasonal products we need to start working 6 to 8 months in advance.

Not only operate in the domestic market, also in foreign trade. What products are exporting?

While we have a presence in Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, they are very small volumes and we are working especially on industrial complementation in Mercosur, producing pieces and sets with supplies of Mercosur origin to distribute in countries where we have a presence.