Merlin.pl, the online bookshop, which already offers music and film CDs, computer games, electronics and toys, will also sell cosmetics this fall.
“Cosmetics are one of the five categories whose online sales grow at the fastest pace”, Lukasz Wiewiorkowski from Merlin.pl explained.
Merlin management is leading advanced talks with
cosmetics producers it is going to cooperate with. The company refused to reveal
the products it is going to distribute. There will be over 10,000 products of
several hundreds Polish and foreign brands.
According to Merlin
estimated, about 7m Poles makes shopping via the internet. Last year, they spent
PLN 70m (EUR 18.6m) to buy cosmetics online, the majority generated by
Allegro.pl, the online auction website.
“We want cosmetics to generate 10 percent of our
sales within several years”, Lukasz Wiewiorowski added.
Last year,
Merlin had PLN 63m of sales. This year, the company forecasts PLN 90m, and next
year, PLN 145m. The majority of sales is still generated by books (60 percent
last year, 50 percent this year).
“The share will constantly fall. We want to become a universal shop, and not only a book shop”, Lukasz Wiewiorowski said. Merlin may start to offer clothes, shoes and jewelry in the future. Today, Merlin has 300,000 products and 2.2m users monthly.