Romanian eMAG starts offensive in online fashion retail, launches own brand

The largest Romanian online retailer eMAG recently expanded into fashion retail and aims to sell clothes worth EUR 7.5 million in the first year. eMAG, which is controlled by South-African investment fund Naspers, will also have its own fashion brand. Naspers also owns FashionDays.ro, one of the biggest online fashion retailers in Romania. Swedish fashion group H&M also launched recently its online store in Romania. eMAG currently sells a total of 14,000 clothing items and accessories, but intends to expand its offer to 25,000 items by next season. The fashion category includes both local brands such as Nissa, Raspberry, Carmencita, TinaR, Lashez, Otter, Madame, Condur and Meli Melo, as well as international brands such as Little Mistress, Selected, Menbur, Aldo, Lacoste, Guess, Lucien Piccard, Caravelle, Celio, YVY Bags and Yepme. eMAG Fashion covers all types of clothing items, from office to casual. The online retailer also launched its own brand, RELEASE, which will include mini-collections of clothing items to be changed once every two months, as well as footwear products. “We want to encourage young Romanian designers to contribute to RELEASE collections and we also aim to have guest designers for each season. We also want to develop a school for young designers,” said Iulian Stanciu, eMAG’s CEO. eMAG expects to register over 150,000 orders in the first year, with a total value EUR 7.5 million. “Our strategy for this segment follows the Fresh Fashion concept, which addresses to clients who wish to be in fashion and look for quality products, but want to choose them undisturbed, from their home or office, and to save time by ordering online,” said Iulian Stanciu. eMAG now offers all categories of products, namely electronics, IT, household appliances, products for children, fashion, house and gardening, books, auto, sports and supermarket. The retailer made almost EUR 300 million in sales last year and said it targeted EUR 1 billion by 2017. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com