CIEL Romania: Half of entrepreneurs who owned physical stores launched online stores during the pandemic

According to an analysis by software producer CIEL Romania, more than half (52%) of the Romanian entrepreneurs who owned physical stores launched online stores during the pandemic, considering that it is a much safer business in the current context.

The company says that the trend of adding the online option or creating an e-shop will continue this year, "many of the entrepreneurs even preferring to give up their presence in the marketplaces in order to have their own virtual store."

"The trend of moving physical stores to online and creating virtual stores is still visible this year. The pandemic has shown us that we can buy anything online, so more and more niche stores will appear, smaller, both in terms of the volume of products offered but also in terms of sales," said Roxana Epure, Managing Partner CIEL Romania.

In 2020, CIEL Romania recorded a growth of 220% in new customers for CIEL eCommerce, the software solution for managing stocks and online orders and the delivery of products.

About half of CIEL Romania's customers are medium-sized companies, fashion, cosmetics, food, or flower retailers, which allocate budgets of up to EUR 1,500. Most of them already own a website and just need to integrate the software behind the site with the e-commerce software.

CIEL Romania data also showed that, during the pandemic, 25% of the customers of the ecommerce solution launched their own online stores, although they did not have this in their business plan. They did this to no longer depend entirely on selling through marketplaces.

Some customers said that they want to completely abandon listing in marketplaces because they find it quite expensive, the company said. Being in a marketplace gives visibility to the brand, but some entrepreneurs prefer to invest more in Google or Facebook promotion and attract potential shoppers directly to their own virtual store.

"The Romanian ecommerce market is experiencing the biggest and fastest growth so far. The pandemic has accelerated this market's expansion, with more online stores created between June 2020 and June 2021 than in 2019. The demand for the CIEL solution for managing online stores has doubled in the pandemic because many physical store owners have launched online stores, and the existing ones have registered very high volumes of sales and have needed a more powerful software that supports all processes, automates and simplifies the activity of inventory and order management," Roxana Epure explained.

(Photo source: the company)