Open Joint Stock Company AvtoVAZ has been producing cars for almost half a century - since 1966. Despite the constant talk about the crisis in the Russian car industry, the profit of this concern has even been growing in recent years. But the largest manufacturer of domestic small cars continues to look for new ways to promote their products, which now include the production of toys.
With the help of toy and collectible models of its cars, the domestic auto giant plans to promote the Lada brand in the Russian and foreign markets. To this end, AvtoVAZ has registered more than a dozen trademarks of already produced and only planned for production models also in the "Games and Toys" class of the International Classification of Goods and Services.
The joint-stock company has already concluded several agreements with car manufacturers and developers for the right to use the trademarks registered by the car company. One of these partners will be the Grand Toys group of companies, based in the same city as the manufacturer of the most popular Russian small cars. The toy craftsmen have already presented to the auto giant a pre-production version of one of the models - Granta. Next in line - Kalina, Largus, Priora, etc. The start of production of toy models is planned for this year, but neither the exact date nor the estimated volume of production has yet been named.
The representative of AvtoVAZ said that the concern does not consider the production of toy car models as a way to make money, but only as a means of promoting the brand in the maximum possible number of ways. The largest manufacturer of passenger cars in all of Eastern Europe last year produced about 580,000 cars and increased the number of sales in Russia by 10.6%. According to the IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards), the profit of the concern for the year ended was 6, 7 billion rubles. However, the production capacity of the auto giant, which employs about 66,000 workers, can assemble more than 800,000 small cars annually.
It is noteworthy that several years ago a representative of the Unity trade union operating at AvtoVAZ called the proposal of the Ministry of Industry and Trade to organize the production of toys and bicycles at the enterprise as humiliating.
