Ukrainians now have one more reason to loosen their purse strings, with the opening of a new mobile phone boutique selling expensive Vertu brand phones in the country’s capital
Ukrainian luxury lovers now have one more reason to loosen their purse strings, with the opening of a new mobile phone
boutique selling expensive Vertu brand phones in the country’s capital. The United Kingdom-based company launched its first shop in Kyiv at Mandarin Plaza last month.
The Vertu brand received a good deal of local fanfare last summer, when Ukrainian media reported extensively about how President Viktor Yushchenko’s eldest son Andriy had one worth several thousand dollars.
The company’s management declined to comment on the incident, instead emphasizing that Vertu has high hopes for the Ukrainian market.
“According to our estimates, there are approximately 200 to 250 Vertu phones in Ukraine today,” said George Matveyev, the company’s regional PR manager in Moscow.
He said the first Vertu phones appeared in Ukraine in 2002 and were distributed exclusively via two shops in Kyiv and Donetsk.
Considering that the cheapest Vertu phone goes for about $6,000, the company might very well have already passed the million-dollar mark in sales in the country.
Matveyev says that after the opening of the company’s first boutique in Kyiv’s upscale Mandarin Plaza shopping center there will be further brand promotion followed by the launch of new shops outside the capital.
“Vertu has boutiques in 34 European countries, including Russia, so it is logical that the company has finally come to Ukraine as well,” says Natalia Schur, director of the Kyiv Vertu boutique.
The Mandarin Plaza location offers Ascent and Signature collections of its luxurious handset phones. As for the top end, Schur says “there’s really no limit.”
The phones from the Ascent collection, which were intended to recall well-known sports cars like Ferrari and Bugatti, feature stainless steel and leather in various colors, including feminine pink and white.
Signature phones have stricter forms and, according to the shop’s director, can be embedded with precious metals like white and yellow gold, platinum and even diamonds.
All Vertu phones are relatively heavy, weighing in at an average 180 grams, but Schur says that the “weight corresponds to the owner’s status.”
“Vertu is a relatively new brand in Ukraine, so it’s too early to make predictions about its success,” Schur said.
Matveyev hopes that the company will be able to attract more customers as it opens a service center in Moscow, which will become the company’s second one in the world, after London.
“It used to be that all the phones were sent for service care to London, which often caused inconveniences for their owners,” he said.
“But with a service center in Moscow, we hope to speed all this up,” he added.
For now, the boutique in Kyiv has not seen many real customers yet, but its director says this is no reason to get upset.
“We’ve had many people coming in and looking at our phones, asking questions, and that’s already a good sign,” said Schur. “This is not a first-day purchase. We understand that people plan such things well ahead, so we expect the real sales to arrive a bit later,” she added.About 30 million Ukrainians currently subscribe to mobile phone services.
