GPeC data: Romanian e-commerce value reached over Euro 1BN in 2014

GPeC (eCommerce Awards Gala) is and has been for 10 years the most important e-commerce in Romania and the biggest online shops community. GPeC centralizes and published Romanian e-commerce market data and is the main source of information in this field.

From Romania’s 19.7M inhabitants, 10M use internet (and internet’s penetration rate is 49.76%) as Romania ranks 1st in Europe in terms of broadband download speed, ahead of Sweden and Netherlands. On the other hand, the number of mobile internet connections grew fast, from 8.2M in 2013 to 9.6M in June 2014 and probably up to over 10M by December 2014.

There’s not too many changes when it comes of  e-commerce demographics: the average age of Romanian online shoppers is 25 – 35 y.o. and most of the online shoppers live in urban areas (over 80%).

When it comes of online shops, their number reached to 5,000 in 2014 in Romania, up from 4.500 in 2013. According to RomCard, from the total of 5,000 online shops, 1,173 online shops are enrolled in the 3D Secure system, up from 1,000 in 2013.

In terms of value, Romanian e-tail market almost doubled compared to previous year, reaching to Euro 1.1-1.2BN in 2014 from Euro 600M in 2013. Still, despite of this growth, e-commerce’s share in the total Romanian retail remains low, of just 2.2-2.5%

In 2014, the top categories for online sales continued to be  IT&C, Fashion (Clothing and Shoes) and Home&Deco.

Home&Deco is definitely a surprise considering this relatively new segment in Romanian e-commerce, growing a lot during the last 2 years

Andrei Radu,

CEO & Founder GPeC.

Last year, Romanians spent, according to FashionDays.ro’s estimation, over Euro 140M online buying goods from  Fashion category.

On the other hand, Black Friday 2014 was a real success, and Romanians spent, on this occasion, Euro 75M buying products online. No matter the products they buy, the preferred method to pay for Romanians is largely (90%) the  cash-on-delivery.

In terms of card transactions made last year, their volume was of around Euro 337M, according to volumes processed by Romania’s main payment processors RomCard and mobilPay. In total, there were 9.5M card transactions, with 7.6M processed through RomCard and 1.9M via mobilPay.

When it comes of transactions, RomCard signaled the highest number of online payments were registered in December, with 753,038 transactions made in just one month.

According to Visa officials, the average value of online card transactions made by Romanians was of Euro 47 for domestic purchases and of Euro 67 for international purchases. The average for an online card transaction in Romania was of Euro 35. Also, the day Romanians buy most online is  Wednesday

The numbers GPeC just published show the huge potential of the Romanian e-commerce market – one of the few national industries growing rapidly year over year. The first billion EUR has been surpassed, we are looking forward to the first 2 digit-number and we are convinced that this will happen sooner than expected considering the market’s average growth rate

Andrei Radu,

CEO & Founder GPeC.

GPeC is the most important e-commerce event in Romania and the biggest national online shops community. The event has more than 10 years on the market and a duration of over 8 months yearly, representing the perfect mix of conferences, workshops, expo, intensive e-commerce trainings and online shops competition aimed at educating and developing the e-commerce market in the region.

The first major GPeC event this year is  GPeC Summit, scheduled to take place in Bucharest on May 11-13 2015. The first keynote speaker announced for GPeC Summit is Neil Patel, co-founder of CrazyEgg, HelloBar and KISSmetrics and has been named by Forbes magazine one of the top 10 world online marketers.

GPeC Summit tickets are available on www.gpec.ro. The price for Very Early Bird tickets is  Euro 49 (VAT included) for each of the 3 event days.