Greece

Blackstone is acquiring Greek ecommerce market leader Skroutz. The American investment company is taking over a majority stake from European private equity firm CVC Capital Partners. The founders will remain involved in the business.

About You, the fashion platform from Germany, is now active in Greece and Portugal. The company continues its Southern European expansion, after launching in Italy only last month. The retailer now operates in 26 European markets.

H&M Group has announced the online expansion of five of its brands. This month, COS, Weekday, Monki, & Other Stories and Arket will have their collections available online in nine new markets across Europe.

Ecommerce in Greece is expected to be worth 4 billion euros at the end of this year. That would be an increase of over 8 percent, compared to the 3.7 billion euros the Greek ecommerce industry was worth last year.

E-Fresh, a fast-growing online grocery retailer from Greece, has had a successful year. The digital supermarket yesterday announced that its sales have increased by 93 percent last year. The company also secured a 88 percent repeat customer rate, while the number of customers grew 94 percent.

The Greek ecommerce association GRECA (which is short for Greek Ecommerce Assocation) has launched the first ecommerce trustmark from Greece. The organization launched the trustmark in cooperation with Ecommerce Europe and the E-Business Research Center. Awardees will be subject to an audit to make sure they comply with European consumer law.

Lesara, a Berlin-based online fashion and lifestyle retailer, has announced it will now also supply customers in the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, The Republic of Ireland, Romania, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

Groupon is no longer active in Greece and Turkey. The American ecommerce company pulled the plug on its operations in these two Southern European countries last week. It’s still not clear why the Greek site is offline now, but Groupon backed down in Turkey because of financial expectations that couldn’t be met.

It may not have been all moonlight and roses for Southern Europe with the financial crises countries like Spain, Italy and Greece had to face, but in terms of ecommerce this European region is doing well. It’s expected that the total online economy of sold goods and service in Southern Europe in 2013 amounted to 39,5 billion euros.