eMAG to start cutting staff in Hungary
Asked by the portal if there are indeed plans for redundancies in Hungary, the retail giant wrote: "eMAG will continue to operate in Hungary with a dedicated local team, capitalising on the growth of regional marketplaces in the South East Europe region, which hosts more than 56,000 sellers.
As eMAG sees its primary growth focus in Marketplaces, the company is centralising its commercial and related support activities.
"This centralization will strengthen eMAG's ability to continue to provide competitive offers to its customers and ensure that its business remains sustainable in the long term in Hungary and the region by capitalising on regional efficiencies and continued investment."
eMAG added that "Marketplace-related activities and local initiatives will continue to be managed locally from the Budapest office, with a focus on identifying potential Marketplace partners and supporting Hungarian entrepreneurs.
In response to a new inquiry, the company told the portal that "as part of our transformation into a regional marketplace, we will continue to operate in Hungary with a sizeable team".
In this response, it is already implicitly acknowledged that there may in fact be layoffs.
While we are not in a position to share specific figures, we can say that we are doing our utmost to ensure that the current changes have as little impact on our staff as possible.
All employees will be supported in the transition, eMAG said, and its response also reveals that the logistics complex in Dunaharaszti will continue to operate, so the Hungarian market can be served from here or from other warehouses.
We recently reported that the best-known and largest online store in Hungary is still eMAG, while the second best-known and largest online retailer is Alza.hu.
Moreover, the gap between the two biggest online platforms has narrowed a lot in 2023. In 2023, the combined gross turnover of the 15 largest e-retailers with local operations in the Hungarian market was HUF 542.5 billion, a 4% decrease compared to 2022.
eMAG announced in March 2019 that it would merge with Extreme Digital, another major player in Hungarian e-commerce. The merger has created a company (Extreme Digital-eMAG Ltd.) with more than 800 employees and a net turnover of HUF 125 billion on the Hungarian market, with the aim of tripling this within five years.
The Hungarian subsidiary of eMAG has switched from an online retailer to a hybrid model: in addition to its online store, the brand has 12 specialist stores in Hungary, and eMAG easybox parcel machines enable the collection of standard-sized products at nearly 700 locations nationwide.
Cover photo: MTI Photo/László Róka
