Ukrainian home appliance and electronics retailer Comfy has begun testing a marketplace format, adding the ability to purchase goods from third-party sellers to its website.
Ukrainian home appliance and electronics retailer Comfy has begun testing a marketplace format, adding the ability to purchase goods from third-party sellers to its website.
As Comfy e-commerce director Oleksandr Boev noted in a comment to Forbes Ukraine, the pilot project started in mid-February and will last about two weeks. Its main goal is to test new scenarios in product cards and collect customer feedback on the updated interface.
Currently, the third-party seller's assortment is being tested in categories that are not typical for the retailer, in particular, baby diapers were among the first offers. According to Boev, decisions on further scaling this direction will be made solely based on the test results.
Former CEO of monomarket Artem Shevchenko estimates a transformation of this scale at $2-3 million in investment and at least a year of work, which will go towards developing internal IT systems and new interaction processes.
Comfy founder Stanislav Ronis has announced a very ambitious long-term strategy. According to his calculations, the company plans to enter the top three largest Ukrainian marketplaces in the first three years, take first place in another three years, and become the absolute and undisputed leader in the market by 2035.
As a reminder, last month Forbes Ukraine reported that Kyivstar and Comfy are in the final stages of negotiations for a takeover, supposedly to open the telecom company's own marketplace .
