The Amazon.pl online marketplace is now available to both sellers and buyers, with a variety of promotional deals for customers, the onet.pl news service reported on Tuesday.
According to a report earlier this year by the Reuters news agency, the long-anticipated move is expected to give a further boost to Poland’s growing e-commerce market.
But the plan could upset Poland’s dominant e-commerce player, Allegro, which enjoyed a buoyant stock market debut in October and whose shares slipped over 7 percent after Amazon made the announcement in late January, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, Polish parcel storage firm InPost, whose lockers are widely used by both buyers and sellers on Allegro’s site, hit the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange in the Netherlands at the end of January.
Online shopping has thrived in Poland during the coronavirus pandemic, with parcel lockers commonly used instead of home delivery.
Amazon began operating in Poland in 2014 and now has nine logistics centres in the country, according to Reuters, but customers were previously diverted to order via a Polish-language Germany-based website, adding to costs.
The news agency in late January quoted Alex Ootes, vice president for EU Expansion at Amazon, as saying that the “next stage is the introduction of a full retail offer for consumers in Poland and it is now time to take this step.”
Before the pandemic, Amazon employed more than 16,000 in Poland, according to a report by state news agency PAP.
In November 2019, the company opened a 60,000-square-metre logistics centre in the village of Okmiany in the country's southwest, with plans to ultimately take on more than 1,000 workers, PAP reported at the time.
(gs/pk)
Source: onet.pl, Reuters, PAP