Polish company Answear is one of the brands created from the beginning with a view to conquering international markets. The platform for selling clothes and accessories over Internet was established in 2010 but launched a year later. Currently, this store is visited by 4M people a month.
History of company
In 2013 Answear received support from the MCI Venture Capital fund, which acquired a minority stake. The money from the investment was allocated, among other things, to enter foreign markets. In 2014, the company opened online stores in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, a year later, in Ukraine and Romania. In 2016, it entered Hungarian and Bulgarian markets. At that time, the company’s revenues exceeded 50M euro annually. More than half of the group’s sales come from foreign markets.
Answear boasts of being one of the first clothing sales platforms in Central and Eastern Europe. It did not have any development barriers related to the need to register activities on each of those markets. It did not have to open stationery stores and thus employ people or create additional administrative structures, which in traditional trade require a lot of time. As the logistic conditions allowed it and the costs were not too high, the company could afford rapid extraterritorial development. As a result, foreign sales grew faster than domestic sales. However, Poland is still the largest market for Answear. It has been operating the longest, has the most customers, and has the best position on the market.
Expansion
Although Western Europe is not a priority, Answear handles many orders from that region. However, the company plans to expand to the east and south in a few years. The planned markets include Russia, Kazakhstan, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Moldova.
In January 2021, Answear debuted on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, acquiring $11.25M from investors. Since its debut, its shares have increased by 16%, and its capitalization is $163M.
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