November the 15th, 2021 - Online shopping has always been the favourite way of getting things done from the comfort of your own home in other parts of Europe, but until recently, more precisely until the coronavirus pandemic erupted, it lagged here in Croatia. Things have now dramatically changed and numerous big players are entering the Croatian e-commerce world.
As Novac/Jutarnji/Bernard Ivezic writes, the growth of Croatian e-commerce is fast heading towards numbers around the one billion euro mark next year, and as the hasty entry of large foreign players has flooded the Croatian online shopping market, an equally significant number of interesting shifts in the domestic market have taken place.
The Orbico Group, the largest domestic distributor and the second largest company in all of Croatia after Fortenova (formerly Agrokor) has entered the world of Croatian e-commerce. Orbico's web perfumery FABUspot, launched only this year, has already reached third place according to user ratings at the Web Retailer Award 2021, the largest e-commerce competition in the entire Adriatic region, which was organised by Ceneje.si on Friday in the Slovenian capital city of Ljubljana.
Data on the operations of FABUspot are encouraging, and the Croatian Orbico Group has doubled its revenue in the last five years alone. Last year, it reached an impressive 18.2 billion kuna, which put Orbico ahead of the INA Group, making it, as mentioned, the second largest domestic company after the gigantic Fortenova.
Another big surprise was prepared by Ivica Todoric's former flagship and the enterprise that was supposed to save the entire company, the Abracadabra web store, ie A007 Plus.
Abracadabra was declared by Fina as having the highest revenue growth of all major online retailers in Croatia, of 124.3 percent, a figure of 21.6 million kuna. For comparison, the fastest growing retailer in recent years was otherwise the popular Bazzar.hr, ie the company Prati me (Follow me). But in the pandemic-dominated year, it grew by 100.7 percent. Despite this welcome title, Abracadabra isn't actually operating positively. Last year, it increased its losses to 9 million kuna, and last year, Bazzar.hr increased its net profit by ten times to 522,105 kuna with revenues of 50.6 million kuna.
The third big surprise for the rapidly growing world of Croatian e-commerce is the new record set by eKupi (eBuy), the largest domestic online store of all. Back in 2020, the company within the M SAN Group increased its revenue by 25.9 percent, to 50 million kuna, or 374.3 million kuna. In addition, it generated a net profit of 4.5 million kuna.
The company eKupi, according to the assessment of the Polish Allegro, which entered the Croatian market with the acquisition of the Mall Group (of which Mall.hr is a part), is the largest domestic player on our market. Allegro estimated it to hold 11 percent of the market. The largest online retailer in Croatia is the Chinese Alibaba Group. The owner of AliExpress holds as much as 24 percent of the share in the Croatian market.
The great interest of foreign players for the Croatian market, especially those from Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Germany, can be seen from the selection of the Web Retailer Award 2021. Many of them are already present in Croatia, however, this choice also shows that smaller Croatian players are working on the development of their own respective web stores and are achieving continuously better results.
The company Smart Trade from Sesvete near Zagreb, whose web store Namjestaj.hr (Furniture.hr) was rated the best in the entire industry, last year increased its revenue by 9.7 percent, to 147.5 million kuna, with a doubling of its net profits to 4.6 million kuna. The company DDL Zagreb, whose pet store PetHomeShop.hr was rated the best in its industry, last year recorded revenue growth of 15.8 percent, to 54.9 million kuna.
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