Latvia

Last Friday, the winners of the first Baltic Ecommerce Awards were announced. The main award, the Grand Prix, was presented to HackMotion. This Latvian company sells sports technology.

Sell.xyz, a Latvian dropshipping startup for customized products, has raised 1,5 million euros in seed capital. The platform has launched selling apparel, cosmetics and supplements. The company follows in the footsteps of other Latvian print-on-demand services.

PrintOnPack.com, a sustainable packaging startup from Latvia, has raised 450,000 euros from SuperHero Capital. The company will use the money to further grow its team, develop the platform and to increase order volumes and revenue.

Latvijas Pasts, the state-owned postal service provider from Latvia, has announced it's building a network of home parcel lockers in Latvia. The network will be open to all logistics service providers and consists of lockers created by Cleveron, an Estonian tech company.

Printing and fulfillment service Printful has received an investment worth over 106 million euros from growth equity firm Bregal Sagemount. This funding makes Printful the first company from Latvia to achieve unicorn status, as it's now valuated at over 1 billion dollars.

Omniva will expand its network of parcel machines in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, also known as the Baltic states. The Estonian postal company already owns 43 percent of the parcel machines in Estonia and accounts for 57 percent for that country's total parcel volume.

Food Union, a dairy production and distribution company from Latvia, has launched an ecommerce distribution service in four markets across Europe. The Riga-based company now delivers ice cream, dairy products, pastry and frozen food to customers in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Denmark.

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.

Latvian online marketplace Joom, which features low-priced products from China, is increasingly betting on French brands. After helping French merchants to sell their products in Europe, Joom wants to take things further and target merchants in other European countries as well.

Printing and fulfillment service Printful will open a new fulfillment center in Riga, Latvia. The company has outgrown its current facility, which is located in the same city. The new site is currently under construction and is said to open in May. The new fulfillment center will open close to the company's logistics partners and the Riga International Airport.

When it comes to online shopping, consumers from Latvia and Lithuania emphasize the superior pricing policies compared to prices in physical stores. The number one issue for online shoppers in both Eastern European countries seems to be a long delivery time.

H&M has opened several new online stores in Europe. It now has dedicated websites in Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Ireland. The fashion retailer offers the same range as it does in the physical stores, with complete collections for men, women and children, including accessories.

DHL has joined forces with the Finnish postal operator Posti and Bring, a subsidiary of Norwegian postal operator Posten Norge. Together they offer a B2C infrastructure for parcel deliveries across Scandinavia, Finland and the Baltic states. With 6,500 parcel shops and parcel stations across seven countries it will be the largest parcel network in northern Europe.

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.

The total ecommerce industry in Northern Europe is expected to reach sales of 36.8 billion euros in 2014. One year ago, the online economy of goods and services in this region was worth 33.2 billion euros, so this year there’s probably gonna be a growth of 10.8%.