Your Balkan Expansion, Simplified - with Catalin Gealapu from Base

This talk discusses the opportunities in the Balkan market, focusing on e-commerce growth and consumer behavior. The speaker highlights that the region has around 75 million potential buyers and a significant increase in online sales, especially in categories like electronics and fashion. Key trends include a notable rise in mobile commerce and the demand for fast delivery services. The speaker also addresses challenges such as payment preferences, emphasizing the importance of options like cash on delivery to enhance conversion rates. Lastly, the speaker presents strategies for businesses looking to expand into the Balkans, including leveraging centralized management and automated workflows for logistics and compliance.

Hello. Hello. How's everybody going? It's working. It's working. Cool. So, today after 1,537 slides, I guess that you have seen until now. Uh I will try to make it as easy as possible and as painfully as possible. idea is that today we have to we will be talking about how can we unlock the power of Balkan. Okay, because at the end of the day we realize that

we are part of a community which is the Balkan community and we should see how can we expand there. So the agenda of today will be very I will try to make it quite simple as I said market overview growth trends uh popular platforms and payments. This is something very important because in this region you need to realize and you need to know with who you should

be working and how you should be working consumer behavior because we need to know who to address and how to address to them challenges opportunities and why expand to the Balkans. First of all, as I said, we'll talk a bit about the market overview. So as you guys can uh you guys know in Bulgaria you have around 6 million people in uh Romania have uh 15 million

and so on. Idea is the power of Balkans is that is made out of 75 million of possible buyers. The age distribution it's around the 30% around in the region of 18 to 30. What this means is that these are people that are well into the region of online. This means buyers and last but not least it's the average uh penetration of internet it's around 80%. Everybody

that we know has a mobile phone has a smartphone and they use internet. Idea is that if you reach them they can be again a possible buyer. Uh market size it's around 20 billion. But what's most important in regards to other regions of the world of of Europe is that here we see a doubledigit increase year-over-year. So last year we have seen 25% increase in sales in

e-commerce from one year to another. Second is that uh key categories are again into the electronics fashion especially now that we are seeing more and more traction in uh in the fashion industry where you see uh fast fashion coming to life and so on uh homegoods and of course last but not least is beauty after the pandemic period a lot of people started buying the beauty parts

of e-commerce. Um again the post-pandemic shift is that we do see as I said a surge in online grocery and as I said into the region of beauty delivery at your home and not to go into a shop most exactly in offline local platforms in each country you have key players uh if you look at Romania Bulgaria you can find EMAG uh if you look at uh

Greece you'll be finding our partners from Scrutz and of course uh Romania also it's taking consideration is such a big market we also have a second player there that it's growing and is called Altex um in the same time as you guys can see in the past period you have seen a lot of traffic or a lot of newcomers in the market u this means that you

have international platforms that are joining Romania and here you're looking at Scroos that started coming into Romania Bulgaria Hungary and so on. You do see the trend. You do see trendial that it's again expanding quite heavily in the past period. And last but not least, Teu and Sheen. This are marketplaces that um are expanding a lot into our side of Europe and it's most important to it's

very important to be part of this expansion. Delivery expectations. Um this is this is on the consumer behavior side because what's very important is for you guys to know that in e-commerce today is not like it was before the pandemic period. Before the pandemic period you could wait for a couple of days, four, five a week maybe two. Now if you don't deliver in the second day

or worst case third day, you start missing out on conversion. Um the courier leaders in the region of course it's fun courier cargo speedy and same day same they made a huge uh a huge step with all the lockers because when you're a buyer you realize that it's very easy to pay press uh the buy button it goes into your locker and you can go there whenever

you have the time or when you're coming uh back from the office you can stop by and pick it pick it up. what people do expect a lot. Yes, it's free shipping and easy returns. Why is that? It's it's very simple. At the end of the day, if it's easy for you to buy, meaning that you don't have uh a service charge, people will buy more. So

that's why each and every time all the all the big players marketplaces have their uh special side where you have free delivery, free this and free that. One of the most important parts that I've seen in in this business because as you can you guys can understand we have a lot access to a lot of data. What we have seen is the fact that if you offer

to the customer an easy return policy he will trust you more and of course he will buy more from you. back uh trust factors again exactly what I said is that boans are okay and they do give chances to international platforms but there you will realize that it's very important to be very sophisticated when it comes to how you will sell to them because what's very important

is that I'll just give an example from a partner of ours is that they were selling only pay by card they didn't go on cash on delivery there and they were realizing that their conversion is very very low. At one point they made a change and they put on cash on delivery. That's the moment that they had a spike in the conversion. Why is that? Is that

they wanted to try you out. They wanted to buy from you but there was an issue in trusting that specific marketplace after they put on cash cash on delivery if they didn't realize that it will have such an increase. again shopping drivers you have the free delivery which is 80% of uh of uh impact. You have the discounts and coupons because yeah everybody likes to have a

nice discount and to have a good Black Friday and so on. Customer reviews. This is something that has been trending for quite some time. It's very important to have good reviews on your platform because if you don't and you want to have a I don't know you have stuff to sell for uh high value and people will see that guy is not really uh sending the package

in time I had issues with this issues with that of course you'll have an issue in conversion even if you have the lowest price possible because there will go the uh easy returns already been through that and as I said cash on delivery it's very important we still like to give away cash challenges again cash on delivery because this is in the last period I've seen people

but cash on delivery is dying no it's not dying it has a it's it's it's slowing down it's not as important as it used to be in the past but it's not dying this is something that everybody needs to understand and we need to put on it each and every time we have a business plan for Romania, for Bulgaria or for Hungary and we are not part

of that country, we need to think of this part. Rural log logistics. Yeah, when you go outside of the major major cities, you do have a a smaller access to internet. Of course, this means that that side of uh of the country is not really buying as much price sensitivity. As I said, we we are very well driven by whatever we have to do with pricing. If

you have a good price and good review, for sure you'll have a good conversion and this means more sales. Um, and yeah, regulatory compliance with the VAT. This is something that uh we hear quite often suggesting to our partners to have a good collaboration with their accountant or with their accountancy firm in order to understand the part of the VAT for each country because it's very important

for you to know what's the VAT in Bulgaria, what's the VAT in Romania. Yes, we you do have the crossber VAT but that's not enough opportunities as I said you do have a high adoption of uh M commerce which is mobile commerce idea is that we are in in our region of Europe we are extremely fast adopters so whatever you seen happening in Germany or in the

duck region and what will happen in Poland in the next one or two years will happen in our region as well. So you guys you need to keep an eye out to whatever is happening outside because this will have an impact on our business in the next one or two years. Uh crossber potential Romania as I said it's a gateway to the Balkans. Why? Because we are

let's say somewhere in the middle. We take a lot of um a lot of waves from the eastern from the western part and this of course helps us to push a lot of products and so on towards uh Bulgaria uh Greece uh Hungary niche markets as I said in the past period we have seen some spikes one of the biggest spikes comes from health ecological products and

premium In the past, you would like to go into a shop and buy your new iPhone, buy your new MacBook, buy your new laptop. Now, you mainly do all of these acquisitions online. So, that's why we're seeing this uh this this spike in sales. You do have a possibility of expanding seamlessly from one country to another. As you guys can see, EMAC is present in Romania, Bulgaria,

Hungary. So from one marketplace you can go in three markets. Scroos they are present in Greece they are present in Romania they are they are present in Bulgaria and they will open other countries as well. So again from one marketplace you go to multiple countries very very easy. So you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You don't need to learn that that that market or to stay

and make a huge uh P&L to acquire that market. And um it's very important the the part the the payment innovations you do have in the past period a lot of transactions through wallet. If you guys don't know what wallet is is that each and every platform offers a wallet where you can buy in installments and that it's offered by the by the by the marketplace. So

actually if our consumer doesn't want to spend money from his own pocket, he can just take it from the wallet and he'll see how he can put the the installment part. Why export to the Balkans? Very easy. It's a strategic location. So we are very close to each other, especially in this period where you don't really need to stay in the line for when you cross border.

Shared consumer trends. what happens in Poland will happen in Romania is happening in Bulgaria is happening in Hungary. So you don't need to reinvent the the wheel. You don't need to spend so much time to acquire a new market. So what you can see that it's working on one country, you have a big chance to work on the others as well. logistics advant advantages after the the

issues with the borders things move much faster much easily and they're not as expensive as in the past and yeah at the end of the day you have various fulfillment services you can put your stock in one place and it's distributed from that side with ease so we talked a bit about the Balkans we talked a bit about what is going on in the B balkans, how

you can expand to the Balkans. But then you'll be thinking, what what's this guy doing here and why is he saying so many things about the Balkans and he didn't say a word about base. So I'll try to make a a very easy sales pitch. So uh in order to make ourselves more understood on the consumer side okay which is on the seller side what we do

is that we are central centralized management. This means that you guys you don't need to understand each and every market and put your ads in in each and every uh by yourself. We will help you and from one place you will jump into multiple places. Automated workflows. In the past you, you know, we have our employee that uh yeah, I have an employee that puts on uh

my stock. Awesome. And I have another employee that uh is asking for the couer to come and pick it up. Awesome. And I have another place person that is looking all around my warehouse to see uh if I have stock or not. Awesome. And so on. idea is that now you have all of it in an app. You don't need to have one person for this, one

person for that, one person for whatever because if your warehouse guy is missing, you don't know where your stock is. If the person that is normally calling the the courier is missing, you don't know how to call a courier. This is then automated by an application that does everything for Cost of delivery and logistics. the fact that we have pre-integrated with uh with the Balkan countries, you

don't need to go through all the hustle of finding the who to uh make the logistic part. You already have it with us in our uh in our app compliance again talking about the VAT uh customs and so on. The same thing it's again said you have all of this help within our app. We already have pre-built integrations. So you don't need to spend money again to

integrate yourself either with Emad or either with Scruts, Trendule or what what other uh marketplaces. You have all of them in one point with just a click of the button. Of course, you need to put your uh your stock up first. Localized logistics. Logistics. Sorry, talking a lot today. Uh localized logistics. Yes, we have again all the major partner or all the major players in each and

every country where of course from time to time we might have good uh very good rates with them because they have been negotiated with them in the idea that we can give it away to our partners uh multi currency and taxes you don't need to know exactly what's the the price of the leva or the polish ly or the or the lelay it's autom automated within your

app. And last but not least, one thing that people are not putting so much pressure on is real time analytics. We are we have a business in online. We have a business where we don't see our buyer. We have a business where we need to know data. We need to have access to the to this data. We need to know what is selling, who is buying, where

is it buying from, and so on. So we know how we can actually proceed and how we can um have a better conversion in that country, city or product. And all of this you will find always in As I said at the beginning, I know that I'm uh between you guys and possible glass of wine and dinner. So uh I try to make it as least uh

painful as possible. Um if you have any other questions for us uh you have my colleagues over there. We have our stand. Unfortunately I think we are out of coffee right now but if we have any more we hope that uh we will see you at our stand. And if you have questions please free. Cheers.