Portugal

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.

Aldi Nord is expanding its ecommerce division. The German discounter is currently testing a delivery service in Spain and Portugal. Aldi is still not fully present in the ecommerce division, as neither Aldi Nord nor Aldi Süd deliver groceries. But that's about to change.

Bizay, a marketplace for customized products, has raised 32 million euros in a Series C round. The round was led by the European Investment Bank and Indico, with support from Iberis Capital and existing investors.

Swappie, which sells refurbished iPhones online, is expanding across Europe. Today, the Finnish startup launched its online store in Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Portugal.

Sizebay, a scale-up that provides AI solutions for fashion ecommerce websites, has developed an algorithm that recommends the best size and fit for clothes and shoes. The tool is aimed to cut returns by half, while boosting sales with 5 percent.

Worten, a popular electronics retailer from Portugal, has completely renewed its ecommerce website in Spain. Worten.es now includes an online marketplace which allows customers to access over 700,000 new products in over 30 categories.

Ecommerce in Portugal is estimated to increase by  over 12 percent this year, so total online sales of goods and services in the Southern European country could be worth 4.73 billion euros at the end of this year. That's a nice growth compared to the 10.52 percent increase of last year.

Groupon closed the doors of 4  European websites. After closing its operations in Greece, Turkey and the Nordic countries, the American ecommerce marketplace is now shutting down in Ukraine, Portugal, Switzerland and Austria. Since yesterday, these websites no longer offer customers interesting deals from local retailers.

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.

For ecommerce players, having an omni-channel approach is getting more and more important as customers continue to demand ever-higher levels of service. This requires retailers to adapt new models and be everywhere the customer wants them to be. Specific approaches to omni-channel however, differ widely from country to country.

Curated fashion platform Farfetch this week announced a €78 million round of investment, led by DST Global, with participation from existing investors Condé Nast International and Vitruvian Partners. The money will be used to further expand across the globe, such as launching websites in German and Spanish.

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.

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.

With regards to the financial crisis, Southern Europe is still one of the most damaged regions in Europe. But maybe the ecommerce industry can change this, little by little. It’s estimated that online sales in this region will reach 47.8 billion euros at the end of this year, while this part of Europe also has shown an average annual growth rate of 22% since 2010.

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.