Slovenia

The winners of the largest ecommerce competition in the Adriatic region were revealed yesterday. In total, 412 online retailers from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia competed. The biggest winner of the evening was Slovenian Bigbang.

Zalando has launched its online store and platform in Lithuania, Slovakia, and Slovenia today. The German fashion giant has also announced it will further expand to Croatia, Estonia, and Latvia this year, and to Hungary and Romania next year.

In both Slovenia and Croatia, there's been a highly increased frequency of online shopping. Currently, 9 out of 10 internet users in these countries have experience with online shopping. Of course, there are also many differences between Slovenia and Croatia, for example in terms of trust in foreign ecommerce platforms.

Ecommerce in Slovenia is showing growth of 35 to 40 percent. More Slovenian consumers are shopping online and there are now over 3,000 small and large online stores in Slovenia. Already 92 percent of online users have shopped online at least once.

The Romanian online fashion retailer FashionUP has taken over Click4Fashion, which is active in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Hungary. With the acquisition, FashionUP wants to further expand its business operations in the region. The value of the transaction wasn't disclosed.

DHL Parcel Europe has expanded its cross-border ecommerce network through a new partnership with Slovenia and Hungary. The parcel company is now working together with the Slovenian Pošta Slovenije and the Hungarian Magyar Posta to strengthen the cross-border ecommerce market and to expand it range of services.

Croatia was quite late with exiting the economic downturn, but is now showing some great signs of recovery. This is also reflected in the online retail industry. Ecommerce in Croatia is showing great numbers. A recent research project of sMind looks at the latest trends in the online shopping behavior of Croatian consumers.

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.

The number of companies that use the internet as one of their sales channels is growing in Europe, but there are significant differences noticeable between sectors and by company size. Slovenian website SMind made a comparison between the results in Slovenia, Croatia and the average in the European Union.

In terms of ecommerce, Slovenia is not one of the popular and well-known countries. That doesn't mean this Eastern European country has nothing to offer. With 1,500 online retailers in a country that has slightly more than 2 million inhabitants, there's still real potential. Time to know more about this country and its ecommerce market!

An increasing amount of consumers are researching products before they decide to buy them. An important information channel during this process is the internet. In Central and Eastern Europe, comparison shopping engines have gained a key role in the buying decision process during the last couple of years.

As part of the upcoming Web Retailer of the Year conference in Slovenia, an extensive consumer-oriented research about online shopping behavior in Slovenia and neighboring country Croatia was conducted. One of the interesting finds is that more Croatian consumers shop at foreign online stores than those in Slovenia.

The ecommerce industry in Central Europe has shown an average growth rate of nearly 23% last year. That is a better development than the average European growth of 17.5%. Together, the countries in Central Europe generated online sales worth 93.3 billion euros. Back in 2012 total sales were worth 75.9 billion euros.

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.

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.