November 16 (SeeNews) - Romanian online retailer eMAG said it has sold over 1.7 million products worth a total of 585.7 million lei ($142 million/ 120 million euro) to Black Friday shoppers on November 13, up by 17% compared to the 2019 edition.
Approximately 54.58% of all orders were paid for online with a bank card, eMAG said in a press release on Saturday.
"It is a historic day in the development of online commerce. On Friday, 10 years since we launched Black Friday in Romania, an impressive number of customers have adopted online commerce as the main way to do shopping. We expect this trend to continue until Christmas and for people to buy holiday gifts online", eMAG general manager Tudor Manea said.
Shoppers bought mostly house care products, personal care products, small household appliances, toys, drinks and coffee, eMAG data indicated.
Most orders per thousand inhabitants came from Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Iasi, Constanta, Sibiu, Timisoara and Brasov.
eMAG counted on a 4 million euro ($4.75 million) investment in servers, hosting and cloud services to sustain the event. Also, the retailer hired 1,200 people this year in its customer care and technology departments in preparation for Black Friday.
Last year eMag booked 499 million lei in Black Friday sales.
Black Friday is the shopping day immediately after the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving, which retailers consider to mark the start of the Christmas shopping season. This year, Black Friday falls on November 27 in the U.S.
eMAG was founded in 2001 by Romanian entrepreneurs, and later expanded in Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. South Africa-based Naspers media group acquired a 70% stake in eMAG in 2012.
(1 euro=4.8690 lei)
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