• evoMAG, an e-commerce retailer with 17 years of experience in the Romanian market, has raised €2M from Catalyst Romania, one of the leading local tech venture capital firms.
• The news follows a string of milestones for the company, including a €200K round at the beginning of 2022.
• The funding will support the company’s plans to expand in Romania and internationally, accelerate offline development, and increase product portfolio.
E-commerce has proved to be an essential pillar of the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even after mobility restrictions were lifted across Europe, consumer preference continues to tip towards online shopping across a multitude of categories. Effects such as increased confidence in and perceived convenience of e-commerce are likely to persist going forward. In Romania, the e-commerce market is expected to reach €7 billion in 2022, at 13% growth YoY, according to Romania Insider.
For e-commerce market veteran evoMAG, the recent growth in online trade was an opportunity to innovate across its product portfolio and distribution model.
evoMAG originally launched in 2005 as an IT&C store. Today, the company sells not only IT&C products, but also household, home decoration, and garden products, as well as electric vehicles and sports equipment. Last year, evoMAG became the first online store in Romania to open a service for electric scooters.
Recently, the company closed a series of partnerships on the distribution side. They have joined the fast delivery race partnering with courier service providers Bringo and BeeFast for its IT&C products, and have started selling products such as electronics and house appliances on the website of another leading online retailer elefant.ro.
As a result, the company grew on average at 25% between 2020-2021 and is counting on a turnover of around €40 million in 2022. To do so, the company aims to unlock a new level of development, both in Romania and internationally, online and offline, announced founder and CEO Mihai Patrascu.
For Catalyst Romania, e-commerce is one of the high-potential sectors they are eyeing for their second growth capital tech fund, closed at €50 million in February 2022. evoMAG will be joining a portfolio that already includes elephant.ro, a key e-commerce platform across multiple categories, including books and toys.
“Mihai Pătrașcu and his team managed, by their own efforts, to build a great company in the Romanian eCommerce space in the last 17 years, proving agility, continuous innovation and always putting the customer first. We are happy to join the evoMAG story and we believe that, together, we will succeed in accelerating the company’s development plans”, Alin Stanciu, Partner at Catalyst Romania, shared in the press announcement.
What comes next
As it looks to unlock further opportunities, evoMAG will be using the new capital to expand across online markets in Romania and abroad, by increasing presence across marketplace platforms. Offline development is also in the cards, with the inauguration of two evoMAG showrooms in the next two years.
The company also aims to double its product portfolio every year in the next 3 years, expand its storage space, and increase the efficiency of operational processes to support this growth. The recent partnerships with fast-delivery couriers serve the company’s target of delivering more than 95% of all orders within 24 hours, and the rest within 48 hours.
Finally, evoMAG aims to grow its team to over 100 employees. By the end of the year, they aim to recruit new people in key positions and departments, from warehouse, customer relations, and showroom, to marketing, programming, and product management.
