When eMAG shuttered its flagship store in Budapest’s Etele Plaza on August 22, it marked more than just the end of its offline retail experiment in Hungary, it signaled the company’s full pivot to a marketplace-first future, Money Buzz! reports.
The closure didn’t come out of the blue. In the summer of 2024, eMAG began cutting jobs in Hungary and shuttered most of its offline stores. The Etele Plaza unit, once touted as a flagship, was the lone survivor, operating a little over a year longer than the rest.
eMAG said the decision aligns with its belief that the marketplace model represents the optimal path forward. This approach not only future-proofs its business but also enables better integration of Hungarian merchants into the wider Central and Eastern European e-commerce ecosystem.
Founded in 2001 in Romania by Radu Apostolescu, Dan Teodosescu, and Bogdan Vlad, eMAG quickly grew from a computer and office supply retailer into one of the fastest-scaling companies in Eastern Europe. In just two decades, its valuation surged past €1 billion.
In Romania, eMAG still operates 19 physical stores, but according to its corporate website three are currently unavailable. In Bulgaria, eMAG has two store, in Sofia (opened in 2020), and Plovdiv (opened one year later).
