Poland

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.

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.

H&M will launch online stores in eight different countries in Europe during 2015. The new online markets will be Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia. H&M’s online stores are already available in eleven European countries.

Global investors are looking with increasing interest to the ecommerce industry in Eastern Europe. The growth and trends in this region attracts the attention of international ecommerce players and investors. For example in Turkey, there's a raised interest of investors, mostly in the clothing sectors.

Facebook is a very popular social network amongst European online retailers. Except for the United Kingdom, where online retailers are more active on Twitter. But Twitter is however still less popular in the UK than in other countries like Germany or Spain. These two countries have the most social media savvy online retailers, as 90% of them are on Facebook and 80% are on Twitter.

As is common nowadays in almost all developed countries, Polish internet users also don’t limit themselves to a PC when making a purchase online. There is even one in every 25 users who has at least once done some online shopping using their e-book reader! Let’s have a look at the way Polish internet users are shopping online these days.

In the United Kingdom there are recently several activities employed and online platforms launched aimed at boosting trade with Central and Eastern Europe. A new UK-based ecommerce site for example aims to alert local companies about business opportunities in Romania, while another initiative is focused on selling British food online in Poland.

With an average growth rate of 19% in 2012 the ecommerce industry in Central Europe was growing almost as hard as the European average, which is 19.9%. The region's ecommerce market was worth 75.9 billion euros in 2012, but it's expected to have grown to 93.3 billion euros last year, which comes down to an increase of 23% in 2013.