Why There’s No CEE Market — And No Amazon of the East #LTM155

There's hundreds and thousands of people promoting ridiculous discounts of Temu.

It seems to be working.

So they're super localized.

Even if it's ridiculous, if you see the ad, you are like, what the hell is like how could even someone can approve to this be the ad?

Nobody really cares.

They just pumping thousands of them, pumping a lot of money into the Marketplace.

Let's Talk Marketplace the Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lohmer and van Rietichte.

Hello and welcome back to let's Talk Marketplace.

I'm Ingrid, your host, as always, and today is just me behind the mic because Valerie is off planning all the events that we are having for Marketplace universe in summer and also in fall.

So she's out scouting communications and got lots to do.

But there will still be a let's Talk Marketplace this week.

And this is why I have invited an old friend, actually David Sikonek is with me who has been on the show some two years ago, I think.

Anyway, it's really great to have you back.

Hi, David.

Guten Tag or Dobriden, however you want.

Yes, because David is from the Czech Republic and my go to person whenever I have questions on the CE market and the Czech market in particular.

So yeah, David, why don't you quickly introduce yourself to the people who have not maybe listened to the episode some two years ago we did together.

I think it was number 83 or something.

It's been a while, so short introduction.

Who are you?

David.

Good to be back.

Thank you very much for inviting me.

I'm David.

I'm from Prague, Czech Republic.

As we say, the nicest city in the world.

Was like everybody thinks about his city as the nicest, but we really mean it.

Anyway, I'm doing Prague makes a strong.

Case, I have to say.

Yeah, definitely strong case for Prague especially, especially for Germans, you know, with the prices of beers, that's like, that's the place to go.

Anyway, what, what I'm doing, I have a small company called rank 26.

We're full service Amazon Agency, which is business that your listeners will know very well, which is managing brands on Amazon.

But since I'm from Czech Republic and I have a lot of clients from Czech Republic and other countries, the topic of today's is not Amazon, but you know, maybe a little bit of Amazon, but mostly like the, the region here where Amazon is weak, which is one of the topics we're going to talk about.

So I manage brands 99% of the time I'm in Amazon seller central, which is, you know, easy job, you Know and so on.

Amazon gives us no problems.

Everything goes smoothly as always.

No, so yeah, and other, some of the marketplaces as well.

We manage few brands here and there but Amazon is still like 99% of the work.

Yeah, absolutely.

And this is why you're here today David, because you are also as we are rather active on LinkedIn and sometimes publishing interesting stuff on your region, which I always follow quite religiously because that gives me great insights into the market that is not my own.

And I think last week you published a chart showing that Amazon has been decreasing in the Czech e commerce.

I mean now Amazon doesn't have a seed set publication of course, but still, I mean I think Amazon De and Pl and so on are still good sources for Czech e commerce.

So I looked at that chart and was like, okay, Amazon has lost about 50% in the that market.

And that got me thinking like okay, is that, is that just Czech Czechia or is that other countries in that region as well?

So yeah, that's what I thought.

Let's talk about this, about why Amazon is still rather weak in the area and who else is strong there and what are we doing with the Chinese new competitors as well.

So yeah, I guess let's go right into this maybe first let's start out with that chart that I by the way link in the show notes if you want to look it up.

Where did you get that from?

So what is that data?

Is that any good?

What is the basis of this?

Yeah, so this is kind of tradition here that this is probably the most reliable data we have on the market published by very well known authorities.

Eureka, which is the most well known comparison site like Idealo, you have those.

So we have Eureka.

It's, it's pretty much the same business model.

Czech Ranch and the Association, Czech E Commerce association and probably some of the partners.

And it's I think the methodologies, they have anonymous card transactions.

So the data is pretty solid.

And here on the market people take it as it is, like this is the source of truth.

So it's not something that just you know, Claude gives you on the Friday evening with like their wild guesses.

It's like probably super reliable here on the market.

So we like, we can be sure and there's no probably better data than that on our market over here.

Okay, yeah, good to know.

And regarding to Amazon, well they lost 50% for second year in a row by the way.

So they 20, 23, they sell for 70 million euros to check customers, some something around that.

So it's a 50% minus 50% again.

And the reason is probably they just don't care about that that much.

It's.

It's easy because like the reason for Czech customers or any other customer who has outside the Amazon domestic countries, your reason to shop on Amazon is mostly like they have something we don't and they have it cheaper.

That's the only reason.

Why would you do that?

And this.

And they just captured by the strong global brand.

And this advantage is not there anymore.

It's shrinking down with two phenomenons.

One is obviously Asians Taemu and Shein being super aggressive in that.

And also Allegro is kind of try to crown themselves as we gonna be the Amazon of the East.

Right now they're localizing their branches to this region and then their claim is pretty much the same.

We have everything and it's cheaper and it's also fast usually.

So then the advantage for a Czech customer or any other customer outside when you have a prime in your country, then obviously there's a reason to buy on Amazon.

But if you don't then it's like why to do it right.

So they just kind of losing the position.

But I would, I wouldn't say if I should guess they are not cry about that.

And Amazon you know headquarters that oh we lost like 50 million euros GMV in two years in Czech Republic because they gain you know, a couple of billions somewhere else.

It's just the global brand itself and no localization just doesn't work anymore.

When the others doing it a little bit more targeted approach then it just doesn't work anymore.

And that's, that's probably, probably the case.

But one more thing.

Two years ago when we did they did 70 million over here in the same year I believe they did hundred or two hundred in Sweden where they already been localized.

So the Czech Republic was probably one of the biggest markets outside the Germany, France like the original, original 5, 6, 7.

And they didn't have any localization over here outside some generic translations.

So it was like probably it makes some money for them and they're still expanding here just with other branches with AWS with prime videos.

Yeah, it's just the E commerce site is probably not that sexy for them here because why to do it, you know.

Yeah.

CL still, I mean maybe for those people who are not that familiar with the Czech market, let's have a bit of a look and to get, get people a feeling on what kind of market we're talking about.

I always use figures from ecdb.

I know they're not that reliable for smaller countries.

So I'll just put that out here, there and you can correct me if, if you have different figures.

That speaks around about a turnover of around about 8 billion euros in Czech e Commerce turnover.

Is that about right?

Yeah, that's about it.

Between 8 and 9, depends how we measure it.

But it's always like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So not a big one, but also not one of the smallest one in Europe.

So interesting to see how much ground Amazon is actually losing.

And there were some other things in that chart that I found.

Yeah, exciting because of course Tim was up by I think 30%.

This doesn't surprise anyone I guess because this was happening all over Europe and the growth rates of TEMU are astonishingly consistent from one country to the other.

But Shein has been losing quite heavily, I think some 45%.

So it seems they are both aiming for the same target group, you know, super ultra low price and stuff.

So why is one losing and the other winning?

Well, why the Shein is losing is probably has two.

There are two other brands to blame.

One is Temu and one is Allegro.

Probably because both of those are just targeting and I know that there is a big difference between them and if someone from Allegro is listening that they really want to kill me if I compare them to tamu which because it's totally different business and I get it.

It's just the targeting on the market is like we have everything and it's cheap.

Right.

So today and, and, and in TEMU is like super cheap and super shitty and you know, you will wait a few weeks and in Allegro is a bit better.

But you know the, I would say the proposition had, you know, it has, it has some common, common ground and Temu as on every market is super aggressive and super localized.

That's, that's the thing that surprised me the most that they're localized in Germany.

No one is surprised.

Right.

But they're with a lot of AI.

They have, they have, that's in Hungarian, in Slovakian, you know.

So it's like even the, the like 40% of the Czech market, if you compare it to Slovakia, right.

So it's less than half and Hungary is like something like that and they are able to localize it even for those market obviously with AI.

So it's super crappy, you know, so there's a, you know, person with six fingers and everything.

But nobody seems to be care that much about that because it's just about the price.

And they've been able to be super aggressive and super localized and they go super viral with maybe not the biggest name in the influence scene because there's a lot of controversy.

They don't want to connect their name to the tamu.

But in my country there was a.

There's like this huge case of super small influencers that take in every buck they can, every euro that anyone who pays them, they will do it.

And if TEMU comes there and here is €1,000, you're going to promote it, they're going to jump around it.

Right.

So there's hundreds and thousands of people promoting ridiculous discounts of temu and it seems to be working.

So they're super localized even if it's ridiculous.

If you see the ad, you are like, the hell is like, how could even someone can approve to this be the ad?

Nobody really cares.

They just pumping thousands of them, pumping a lot of money into the market.

And Sheen, it's still been, I don't see them on the market that aggressive.

Right.

So they're still being like, yeah, we're global, you know, global brand.

Everything is in English.

And it's just with comparison to TEMU doing this and Allegro being super targeted and invest over billion euro in last four years into the Czech market.

Still losing money, but being a bit clever in last two years.

Yeah.

Then probably people just start to shop there because it's more convenient for them.

That's probably the answer.

That's an interesting point.

Both of these things that Timu is actually localizing even in smaller countries where there's less for them to gain in, in a bad way.

But I mean that this is what they're doing in all of Europe.

So they're doing that for Germany as well and it works there too.

And then the other hand that how important that seems to be to in this case Czech customer to at least get a shitty AI translation instead of getting none.

Which is interesting because whenever I'm in Czechia everyone speaks perfect English.

So I was like, that shouldn't be that much of a problem for Shane.

It's probably, it's probably different, it's probably different Czechia that I live in because the English is not, not that great here.

But okay, yeah, maybe I've most, mostly been to the bigger cities.

That's.

And, and the tourist areas.

So that wasn't the problem there.

Yeah, that.

And we talked about, we talked about that before, before the podcast and like the Czech is somewhere in the middle of being small and Big it was like decent size.

That there's super relevant, super targeted local brands that in every vertical there's super strong local brand like Notino which is even European wide.

That's originally Czech.

Right.

And in every single vertical there is this super specialist.

We don't have any Amazon which covers all now Allegro tries to be that.

But still, you know, revenue wise, okay, successful profit wise, totally not.

But in every single vertical there is this strong local player which can have a huge successful business just being checked because it's big enough but can't compete with Europeans because it's not not big enough.

Right.

So.

So that's why the Czechs get used to.

We have everything localized for Czech because it's somewhere on the edge of big and small.

So it sometimes make makes sense.

So that's why, that's why doesn't work Amazon in English or in German or just.

Just like that.

Czechs want the Czech as always.

The local customers want the local.

That's.

That's always the same.

But if you are like Slovenian then you probably get used to English a bit more because you are the country is like much, much smaller than.

Obviously not everything is in Slovenian but you know, it's probably the customers are same.

They just want to see the locally.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Local players like Alsa and Nutino as you said, still very strong.

But apart from Notino which went at least European wide.

As far as I know most Czech players tend to stay to keep to Czech here.

Is that right?

That's right.

You will maybe know number second or third the Czech biggest E Commerce is Rohrik which is Knoops.

It's.

I'm.

I'm not sure how to say that in German they are delivering beverage, food real time even for Amazon.

In Germany they're originally Czech company but outside of that you're right that most of them are Czech only or Czech and other Slavic cee countries because to go to Germany it's a big step.

We have only a few and again we have the same problem as everyone else is like okay, you go to Germany then The spend is 5x and there's Amazon and there's other platforms and why.

Right.

So yeah, so only a few brands are going west.

Most of the Czechs E Commerce is going south, north or east, northwest.

Interesting.

So if I sum that up, that is a mostly domestic market that is proud of their own E Commerce and ask for E Commerce in their own language.

We have Amazon not really doing very well and maybe underestimating the whole Market as a whole.

And we have Chinese players or at least one Chinese player with TEMU who is taking the market quite seriously and growing fast because of that.

So if we sum up all these things, is Czechia then representative of other CEE markets like Poland or Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, or is Czechia special case?

That's a hard one because in, in some metrics, if you have a look at the spending on the Internet, the, the checks are the, the, the amount of spending, Czechs are closer to Germans than to Hungarians.

And if you compare it with salaries, we spend pretty much the same as Germans on the percentages on the salary.

Obviously in absolute numbers it's lower.

But, but we spend, we spend similar numbers as, as Germans.

If you compare the size of the market, that's one Bundes Republic in Germany.

Right.

So that's.

And, but we don't have any one big platform such as they have in Poland, obviously with Allegro being super giga dominant there.

Right.

And that's their case, you know, in, in Romania.

That's totally different case with Emac and with Trendio coming from Turkey and China.

Right.

So, so there's like, I, I'm not sure if the regional comparisons make any sense anymore that like there's this region and they have some similar things.

It's like if you have a look at the, each country and in the day and, and in their individual differences, you will probably have bigger differences among the countries than you have between countries, which you would never suppose.

Right.

And in some cases, I don't know, Czech Republic and Netherlands, you can compare it with for example, number of web stores, that's like number one and number two, number of web stores in the market.

Netherlands and Czech Republic are, you know, having this, having this, you know, Premier 50,000 plus Websters in Czech Republic and, and somewhere around the same number in, in, in the Netherlands.

If you compare it better, you know, capital or something like that.

Yeah.

Why is that?

I have no clue.

Probably again, super localized services, no Amazon, something like that.

So I wouldn't say that there is something inherently same about the countries just because they're next to each other and each is a little bit different and there is no one platform which makes it complicated.

Yeah, yeah, that is really interesting because I as, I just today had the pleasure of being an expert on another podcast from the US and they asked me about the European market and the first thing I told them was there is no European market.

There's different countries and you have to treat each of those differently.

But the interesting thing is that whenever I talk to German or French or other Western E commerce people, they tend to think of CE as one region that you can attack with the same strategy.

And now you're telling me basically the same thing that I said today about Europe, which that is just not the right approach that will help you anywhere.

So really interesting and maybe even less because as you say, at least in Western Europe you have Amazon as the main source of E commerce turnover.

And something like that is missing in the East.

Yeah, interesting.

I mean you have a few of those champions in the area, Allegro in Poland and trying to be something of an Amazon of the East.

The same was attributed to Emac for a while.

But they're not doing that well, are they?

Because I don't see them that much.

You're right.

That's like maybe five plus years ago there was the contender.

Yeah.

People were saying like that's the only platform on the east which has more market because in that times it was Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland.

But they grew super strong in Romania being the electronics seller and then everything and then having retail and then being on the market for 20 years.

So they have like super strong ground there.

But they actually never successfully expanded somewhere else to be honest.

Because in Poland after a few years they canceled Poland because they couldn't compete with Allegro.

Maybe a year ago they actually did almost full exit from Hungary.

They left their part of the business but not all of it.

So now they're like half in Hungary, little bit in Bulgaria.

And they probably have super hard time in their domestic market in Romania because of trend identifies.

Their enter market as Romania probably geographically from Turkey is just a close and they are backed by Chinese money and I didn't see the stats.

So if I'm wrong, sorry, but I think that they even surpass AMAK in certain seasons of the probably visits.

Not sure about transactions, but probably Mark is having right hard time to actually even defend the Romanian market.

They will still be stronger obviously, but they're not pushing to be the platform anymore.

They're like just you know, probably building the walls as they can in Romania.

So they're not, you know, kind of relevant as a platform anymore.

I would say for.

So if someone is looking for I want to expand to the region that's like mx super relevant for Romania.

Obviously other countries not relevant anymore.

And initiative probably last year's been, you know, is on the Allegro side mostly since they are having three or four countries right now still dominantly Poland, but having appetite to go to go more to be the Amazon of the East.

As you know, people are saying, you know, as a stereotype.

But so, so, so yeah, I'll.

Sorry Emma.

Probably like lost.

Lost the momentum.

Don't even know like if anyone knows something more than you know, let us know.

But just from the market, there's no like buzzing around that customers are popping here.

Like I want to go on imac because I hear it.

It's great.

No, not.

Not really that much anymore.

Not anymore.

Yeah, that's really interesting.

And I didn't actually have that on my mind that trendy old is attacking emac in their own home domestic country.

Because trendy old was a few years back they tried to enter the EU via Germany.

Actually that is when I went into got into contact with them and but they retreated quite so I didn't know that now they're trying it via Romania.

Really interesting.

Yeah.

Maybe if you're talking about competitors and about platforms that are relevant to the region or to some parts of the region at least I know that some western countries companies are now discovering the region and trying to tackle it with their own means.

For example, Otto has just now opened up to Pol Sellers.

But the more interesting competitor might be Kaufland actually who has opened a marketplace a few years back in Czechia and also in Slovakia and recently in Poland where they seem to be doing quite well.

At least that's what they told me on their recent conference ECD in Cologne and they just opened a few new marketplaces this time in Netherlands and in Spain.

But I would have absolutely went with it if they said they opened one in Bulgaria and Romania because they have a strong brick and mortar presence there already.

So how is Kaufland looking from your local perspective?

Do you even notice them in the market as a marketplace?

Yeah, that's for me one of the biggest questions on the market and nobody seems to know the answer.

Like what is actually Kaufland want to do because they entered the.

The first expansion from Germany, the Czech Republic.

Right.

Seems to be as logical retail strong, brand recognition stronger, etc.

Good market to test.

Okay.

They enter it with pretty much the same time as Allegro start to be aggressive and a stam will start to be aggressive.

And so in the first few months it looks like they go head to head and after few months it looks like they, okay, we tried give up just going on autopilot.

And since that they are still strong, they grew like I don't know, 40% per year.

You know, they still doing something like 70 million euros on the market.

While in Germany they do something like 1, 2 billion probably in the E Commerce even more.

And since they are not publicly traded, we don't know the numbers and they are not disclosing much.

So.

And they are now opening country number seven or six or something like that.

So.

And in, in the market or check E Commerce, it's more like we don't know where to put them because they are here.

They are strong in the absolute numbers.

But since, okay, I do Amazon, but my, my clients are usually even on other marketplaces and they usually go with Cal Fund sooner or later.

And I would say that 90% of them are like, yeah, Kaufman is there doing few percentages.

What other marketplaces are doing.

It's there, we are there.

So here and there we click somewhere and do some promotions.

But outside of that we just wait until the orders are coming.

And there isn't any like push from that because from Allegro you can, you can feel it on the market that they really want it.

They are not able to invest, you know, everything there, almost everything there.

Okay.

But from Kaufland it's more like we don't know what they do like and what they want to do.

Maybe they're super profitable on the market and that's okay with them.

And the second one is the biggest advantage I seen then.

It's the retail and the connection between the E Commerce and the retail.

And there's.

For three years they've been on the market and there's no connection outside.

You can actually spend the points, the points you get in the physical store.

You can spend them online and vice versa.

But that's the only way how you can actually connect it.

There is no like you can deliver return items to the retail or something.

So I don't know.

You tell me if there isn't any other sentiment around Calphone, but here's more like they are here.

I connect, you know, my products there if I can, but that's kind of it.

And, and it's marketplace number five or six.

So I would say that they didn't.

I, I actually I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm.

I think they do not have the, they do not have proposition for the market because they're like around Allegro.

Temu Shein is like.

And there is Alva with the strong proposition of local and fast delivery.

And there is this Allegro with.

We have everything and it's not that slow.

And then we have Temu with everything and super cheap and super crappy.

So like there's somewhere in the middle which as we Know, like if you don't have, if you don't define the USP properly, you are somewhere in the middle, which mean like no one and you are kind of nowhere.

I have the, the sentiment from the Kaufmann here on the market, but maybe in Germany it's different, I don't know.

But here is like we don't know what to expect.

That's interesting.

That's really interesting because as I said before, the countries inside the CE region are very interesting to Western e commerce people.

That's what I hear a lot, especially from German retailers and brands.

And they're always looking at it and eyeing it and going like, yeah, but it's complicated.

You know the language and the logistics.

Because your customers in these countries have high expectations of good logistics and that's sometimes quite the problem.

So they are looking at a player that they know and that they are maybe already connected to, like Kaufland.

And it is relatively easy to just upload your assortment that you already have on Kaufland De or Kaufland FR to for example Czechia.

And that makes it easier, that makes the entrance point easier.

So that is an attractive proposition for everyone trying to enter the market from the West.

But of course, as you're saying it is by now a quite disputed country with lots of interesting players around.

And yeah, the market has not exactly waited for a western competition, I think.

Well, if you are western brands and you want to try just.

The platforms are not the answer.

That's the truth because Calfland has less than 1% of market share here and Allegro maybe 4.

Just roughly guessing it.

So it's like I go to Germany through Amazon and there's 30 plus percent depends on the category market share of Amazon.

So I can capture.

That's the event.

That's why we do it.

You know, with our company we can capture the big portion of the western market just with one, one player.

But here, if we take, okay, Allegro in Poland, that's the different story.

That's the Amazon size, right?

That's the only way our platforms make sense.

It's like Allegro Poland, obviously that makes sense, but the other ones like Allegro and Czech Republic, like individually Allegro and Czech Republic, I would say doesn't make any sense.

It makes sense in the mix of all the other countries, but as individual country, it doesn't make any sense.

So for anyone who want to enter like these markets outside Allegro in Poland, that's like kind of the old school way you do your web store and then you have the Google and the social and the Price comparison side and you need to do it like the hard way.

There is no platform that can actually, you know, speed things up, such as Amazon in the west.

So we have it easier to your region that you have it to our region.

Yeah, absolutely.

Before we close, I'd like to take up what you just said about, you know, social media and pushing it through different channels because there's one new player entering the market, the area with Poland and that is TikTok shop they are launching this year in Poland.

There's already a lot of polish users on TikTok as a platform, but now the shop is also coming.

So is that something that you see for your region, for tech, for tech on the one side, but also for the whole region that social Commerce, especially with TikTok shop could be a winner?

Don't think so.

Because all the, all the players, all the e commerce players, the social media and especially the TikTok shop as we see it in the US it's mostly the place where people discover products but behind it, who's the biggest supplier of TikTok shop?

It's AliExpress, Temu and Amazon prime, obviously.

And it's the same here.

So if you want to go with TikTok Shop and Discover products, TikTok will not have their own logistics.

What they need, what they need in Poland, Allegro or they need Impost with paczakomati.

Right.

So it's like they need some big partner who will subsidize it.

Same with Agentic, by the way.

It's like if Shopify cuts the deal, when Shopify cuts the deal with GPT for being, you know, their Shopify store could be, you know, used by their agent.

It's like that's the winning strategy because so, so for me it's more like the upper funnel change than the delivery because the delivery and the transaction and the reviews and trust is still be probably on the, on the on the web store.

So I don't think that individually or subjectively on the market, I don't think that people are like super afraid of, oh, there's going to be a TikTok shop that's like another threat of what's already.

It's, it's more going to be like just people going to shop on TAMU through different, different platform.

That's that and I think in Poland it's going to be safe.

Much more interesting in Poland is right now for me as an outsider since I, you know, speak a little bit Polish and I'm like not insider.

That's the Fight between Allegro and the Impost, which is like the biggest marketplace versus the biggest local parcel shop carrier, which been hand to hand for many years.

And now they split and the Impost actually introduced their own marketplace with zero fees because they own the chain of the locker rooms.

The biggest chain of the locker rooms.

And they, fighting the monopoly of Allegro, try to push their own delivery.

So it was like the marriage of the market.

Now they split and they are divorced and there is this bit of the tension.

So this logistical company launched their marketplace through the, through the.

They're a mobile app with like zero fees.

You just, we just, you just pay for the delivery because we just make money on the, on the Pachkumati.

So that's for me more interesting on that market than TikTok Shop, to be honest.

Okay, wow, that's interesting.

I haven't heard of that at all, so really have to look that one up.

But because, yeah, that sounds like a very interesting story.

Right.

So thank you for that.

Maybe because our time is running out.

But just as a final question, if we're looking at, if we are a western brand and looking at the CE market, people would I guess first look at Poland just because of market size and then there might be a tie between Czechia and Romania and then the smaller countries.

So what would be your recommendation if you had this roadmap in mind?

Like, like Poland first, then Czechia, then Romania, then maybe Slovakia.

What could, could people do first?

Or is it even a good idea to start in Poland?

Or maybe is it a better idea to start in a smaller area?

Because Poland is a very difficult market,.

Especially with Allegro be a western brand and I, and I'm using platforms in my domestic market or markets, then for me I would still go Allegro Poland because that's like the Amazon style, you know, 30%, one company, not that hard to set up, not that complicated.

That would be probably like the, if I say I want to invest first hundred hours somewhere and the first thousand euros, that's obviously, this is probably the quick win I can get the easiest.

And while Allegro is pushing towards Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and soon Ukraine, by the way, they're going to be in Ukraine, then that's like, yeah, I can probably capture the most cost customers with just one platform.

That probably would be the number one.

And then you need to look individually on each country where you, as I said, you can have vast differences between a country, spending power, gdp, whatever the competition.

And you can find that.

Okay, there is the biggest potential is also in Bulgaria.

I don't know.

And then because as I said, it's like one region.

People would die to say one region, you know, as we do it, like America.

And then there's actually 50 states where like each is a bit different.

And they would say that they are totally different guys from Texas are totally different from Washington as we see them as Americans, you know, and they're all same.

They're not.

So I would go quick win with Allegro and then look at the market.

The Czech Republic is super sexy in a lot of metrics with, as I said that, you know, a lot of metrics reminds you, Netherlands reminds you Germany, while having a super strong local competition, which makes it tough.

So just be careful about like jumping on a. Yeah, like let's, you know, let's make a decision on what ChatGPT will, you know, tell me about that.

That's like probably not gonna.

It's not gonna be the winning strategy.

Well, what has it ever been, right?

David, thank you very much for your insights.

That was as entertaining and helpful as always.

So, yeah, I guess you just stay my CE go to guy for the debatable future.

So for now.

But thank you for joining me today.

It was fun.

Thank you very much and see you soon.

And if, yeah, hopefully.

And if you enjoyed our episode, I'm always happy if you leave us a follow or subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, wherever.

You know how it works.

And yeah, so that was our CE adventure for today.

Next week I'll be back here with Valerie where we will tell you what we have learned at K5 conference, the biggest e commerce conference in Germany, which will take place next week.

Yeah.

So till then, see you and thanks for joining us today.

Bye.

Bye.

You listened to let's Talk Marketplace, the Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Vannery Dichtel.