After Europe and North America, Varaždin based Dida Boža brand is coming to Hong Kong.
Hermes International company from Varaždin, best-known for its Dida Boža brand, is in contact with partners in Hong Kong and hopes to soon start selling its products there, reports Jutarnji List on December 15, 2017.
“We have entered the Asian market a few years ago, and we are currently present in the Indonesian chain of Carrefour supermarkets. We have the ambition to further expand to Asian market, especially in the luxury hotels segment”, said Petar Krvarić, CEO of Hermes.
Delicacies of the Dida Boža brand, such as jams, figs, eco-juices and “ajvar”, can be found in more than 20,000 American stores, such as in the Whole Foods chain, to which they export as much as 70 percent of their products. In the American market, Dida Boža brand is present under the name “Dalmatia”. They also export their products to Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 2016, total exports amounted to more than 115 ship containers of products, or about 4.5 million bottles of jams and spreads. Although sales in Asia, compared to the total sales, at the moment amount to just one percent, the initial presence in Asia is very important for the company.
In addition to the expansion to the Asian markets, the plan for 2017 includes opening of stores in Split and Zadar, bringing the total number of stores to four. In 2016, the company opened the first two specialized stores of the Dida Boža brand, in Zagreb and in Vodice. Hermes announced that in a few days they would launch a new Dida Boža website.
In the past nine years, Dida Boža jams have won seven gold medals, and at the Fancy Food Show international trade fair held in late June in New York, the Dida Boža cherry jam won a silver award in the New Product category.
In the last two years, Hermes has invested three million euros in a new production facility, which was partly financed by the funds to help rural development, in order to double the production capacity and create conditions for further growth.
In 2016, the company reached a figure of 70 employees. Due to the 30 percent increase of exports to the American market, the number of workers has doubled in recent years. In order to reward the workers, the company in late December paid bonuses to all employees in the total amount of 200,000 kuna. Additional bonuses were paid to employees who had been with the company for ten or more years.
