Big news! Another European blue ocean platform "opens its doors" to Chinese sellers

2024 is destined to be an extraordinary year for Chinese cross-border sellers. Amid the fierce competition in global e-commerce, cross-border platforms have set off a "tide of entering China", and Chinese sellers have become the "hot cakes" that are being snatched up.

Amid the industry's multi-platform layout boom, overseas local e-commerce platforms that are in a boom cycle and welcome Chinese sellers seem to be more likely to "hit it off" with Chinese sellers seeking additional performance than mainstream platforms that are experiencing intensified internal competition.

Recently, the latest investment policy announced by eMAG, a leading local e-commerce platform in Eastern Europe, has attracted the attention of sellers.

For eMAG, 2024 is also a special year. Public data shows that eMAG has made extraordinary achievements this year, especially in the Black Friday promotion, with a transaction volume of 1.35 billion yuan, breaking the historical record and setting 5 new records, with the platform customer unit price as high as 2,075 yuan . This achievement is inseparable from eMAG's new strategy in 2024: supporting Chinese sellers.

Thanks to the significant demographic dividend, huge market size and the support of the "Belt and Road" economic policy, the Eastern European e-commerce market has not only gradually shown strong growth potential, but also created a relatively "safe" golden zone for sellers pursuing profit margins. In 2023, the e-commerce market size in Central and Eastern Europe will be 104 billion euros, and will increase by about 18% to 122 billion euros in 2024.

eMAG, which is located in this blue ocean and has an absolute market share, recently launched a new investment policy for 2025. The most eye-catching one is that eMAG announced that it will invest more than 100 million euros to support Chinese sellers from 2025.

Specifically, from the perspective of investment policy content , eMAG's support for Chinese sellers mainly focuses on four aspects:

First, service. eMAG has three teams to serve Chinese sellers, including the Romanian local team, the Shenzhen team in South China, and the Hangzhou team in East China, with about 40 team members. eMAG also plans to set up offices in several cross-border e-commerce centers in China to solve the problem of insufficient investment promotion and improve the timeliness of store opening and service quality.

The second is operation. eMAG will expand the operation team to optimize the service of a series of processes from seller advertising, event planning, product selection analysis to product incubation . For example, it will determine the best advertising plan for sellers and optimize the advertising content to improve conversion rate; provide in-depth market analysis and consumer behavior research on product selection issues to help sellers find market gaps and potential hot-selling products ; in terms of event planning, it will provide tailored event suggestions based on the sellers' own needs and store characteristics to help improve brand awareness and customer engagement.

The third is logistics. eMAG stated that in 2025, it will improve logistics infrastructure, warehousing procedures, and order processing speed. At the same time, its FBE hosting service can not only efficiently deliver sellers' goods, but also "go against the grain of other platforms" and provide special preferential benefits to new sellers during the peak sales season . For example, in September 2024, eMAG announced a new seller empowerment policy. If the relevant conditions are met, the seller's SKU can get discounts on storage fees and order processing fees.

Fourth, the threshold. Compared with before, eMAG has further lowered the threshold for Chinese sellers : canceling the experience restrictions on specific platforms, optimizing the store opening process, and increasing support for potential sellers. For example, for high-priced products, the more SKUs arrive at the warehouse within the month of activation, the more favorable the storage and order processing fees will be.

Further digging into the reasons behind eMAG's large-scale opening to Chinese sellers, we find that although Chinese sellers accounted for less than 10% of the eMAG platform in the past year, they have demonstrated huge market vitality and growth potential .

Data shows that in 2024, sellers who opened stores through the eMAG China investment team had an order rate of up to 85% in a week, with an average customer unit price of more than 90 euros . The explosive order data during Black Friday fully demonstrated the market acceptance of Chinese sellers on eMAG.

However, while paying attention to the new investment policy, many sellers are also worried that as the threshold for entry into the platform is lowered, Chinese sellers will flood in on a large scale, causing Eastern Europe to quickly become a highly competitive red ocean market.

As Shakespeare said: When the flowers are in full bloom, you should pick them first, before the beauty is gone. More sellers believe that Eastern Europe and eMAG are still releasing dividends, and entering the market now has a better chance of becoming "the first to try it out."

▲ Scan the QR code to join eMAG

So, is eMAG worth investing in? Perhaps we can get a glimpse of it from its performance in the past year.

Romania is a leader in the gold rush of Eastern Europe. According to statistics, the sales of Romania's e-commerce market will reach 11.5 billion euros in 2024, a year-on-year increase of about 16% , making it the leading e-commerce market in Eastern Europe with great growth potential.

As the largest e-commerce platform in Romania, eMAG has 120 million visits per month and 9 million active users . It has become the preferred online shopping platform for local consumers and is known as the Romanian version of Taobao. Currently, eMAG's business has expanded to Hungary and Bulgaria, providing more than 22.8 million products . Compared with platforms of the same scale, it still has broad room for development.

Looking back at eMAG's performance in fiscal year 2024, as of March 31, 2024, the eMAG Group's business revenue has exceeded 2 billion euros, an increase of 11% year-on-year. The order volume has increased from 21.5 million to 56 million, a 2.6-fold increase , which is enough to show that the platform is currently in a period of rapid growth and product expansion .

▲ The picture shows "Hot categories under eMAG market trend analysis"

During the Black Friday promotion in the same year, compared with other platforms that frequently reported "cold reception", the first wave of Black Friday sales at eMAG Romania was extremely popular: 1.6 million items were sold in just three hours , and the transaction amount and number of consumers on the platform hit record highs. Product categories such as baby products, beauty products, home furnishings, and electronic products achieved significant growth.

Among them, the sales of third-party sellers also reached a new peak, with a year-on-year increase of 30% . Many industry insiders believe that this growth data is inseparable from the contribution of Chinese sellers . Relying on a strong supply chain, Chinese sellers have a considerable advantage in product cost performance, so many of the products they sell have become the "new favorites" of consumers in the Eastern European market. Chinese sellers are present in eMAG's Black Friday hot-selling categories such as household goods and electronic products.

Now that eMAG has announced that it will invest more than 100 million euros in supporting Chinese sellers starting from 2025, it undoubtedly shows that the platform attaches great importance to Chinese sellers. Therefore, it has once again attracted the attention of many Chinese cross-border sellers who are preparing to expand new markets and increase sales.

According to industry sources, eMAG has gone to great lengths to attract Chinese sellers to join:

Judging from the feedback from the industry, many Chinese sellers who have settled in eMAG said that the current competitive landscape of eMAG is relatively good and the profit margin is very considerable, so they will continue to increase their investment in eMAG in 2025. They believe that compared with mainstream platforms where Chinese sellers account for more than half, eMAG is far from saturated , and worrying about the intensification of platform competition in today's bonus period is tantamount to "worrying about nothing".

Are you interested in joining eMAG? Welcome to discuss in the comments section~