Poland

Almost one in eight Polish internet users, and one in four online consumers, shop on foreign websites. And the people who do this, mostly shop cross-border for clothes and accessories. Also media like books, CDs and films and multimedia like apps and e-books are among the most popular products Poles buy on foreign websites.

Docdata, a Dutch service provider for online retailers, will work with Allegro Group in Poland. Docdata was already active in this Eastern European country, but this will be its first complete fulfilment operation in Poland. For Allegro, Docdata will be providing both fulfilment and returns management.

CCC, which is the market leader in the Polish footwear retail industry, has entered the local ecommerce market after acquiring Eobuwie.pl for approximately 30 million euros. Eubowie.pl is Poland's biggest online shoe store.

Divante, an e-business agency that supports other companies in optimizing their online sales, will enter the Dutch market. It already built an ecommerce site for Dutch company Loods5.nl and is now working on a whole new website for a Dutch online retailer. We interviewed Tom Karwatka, CEO of Divante, and discovered how they think about Dutch ecommerce…

In Europe, more and more consumers like to pay using their smartphone or tablet. In share of mobile device owners who already have experience with mobile payments, Turkey is the absolute leader in Europe. This is apparent from the latest report by yStats.com, called "Europe Online Payment Methods: First Half 2015".

Shoper has launched a new solution for online shop owners called Shoper Payments. The Polish ecommerce platform now has its own online payment system, which is available to everybody that has an online store running on Shoper's software.

DHL has relaunched its Allyouneed service. Previously, it was an online supermarket, but this is now rebranded as Allyouneed Fresh. And MeinPaket.de has now become Allyouneed. Quite confusing right? Well, get used to it. The latter shopping portal will expand to other European markets. It rolled out already to Poland in March and more countries will follow.

The online fashion industry in Poland is being dominated by two players. First, there's online sales platform Allegro that, via the so-called Strefa Marek, offers products from various popular fashion brands. And of course, there's Zalando which dominates the online fashion retail industry with its ecommerce business. Gemius shared the latest trends from this industry with us.

Ecommerce in Poland is developing rapidly. With 75% of Internet users who bought something online and about 10 million online shoppers, Poland is a very interesting market for investors and foreign companies. A new report on the Polish online retail industry substantiates this.

The average amount of money Polish Internet users spent each month on online shopping was 156 zloty or 37.28 euro in 2014. And this year, about 6 in 10 consumers will be more likely to shop online rather than in traditional stores.

Customers in Poland can now make payments in stores and online, withdraw cash and send P2P transfers, all using their mobile phone. They can do this with Blik, a new service set up by Polish Payment Standard, a company that's formed by Poland's six largest banks.

H&M will sell online in Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Switzerland. The Swedish fashion retailer is making a big ecommerce push as it already invested heavily in its online retail site and took several steps to connect its web and mobile assets with its brick-and-mortar stores.

eMAG, the largest online retailer in Romania, sets foot in Poland. Its sales platform will extend into this Eastern European country, after eMAG.ro's owner Dante International acquired Agito, one of Poland’s biggest online stores. Poland will be the fourth international market where eMAG.ro will be active in, after Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.

There was a growth of 45% in the cross-border ecommerce industry in Poland this year. With this growth rate, it grew harder than the cross-border ecommerce industry in European countries like Romania, Greece and Hungary. Polish consumers would shop more abroad if cost of returns was free.

It's estimated that the value of the Polish ecommerce market will be worth 6.94 billion euros (29 billion zloty) in 2014. That's 1.2 billion euros more than the Polish ecommerce industry value in 2013. Nowadays, more than 60 percent of Polish Internet users make online purchases and this number is about to grow. The Polish ecommerce industry however, does have one big problem: too many online stores still ignore mobile users.