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, 24.hu reports.
Responding to 24.hu questions about the closure, the company said the decision aligns with its belief that the marketplace model represents the optimal path forward. eMAG argues 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.
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.
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 2009, Asesoft Distribution acquired a 51% stake, and by 2012, the company had become the largest online retailer in Eastern Europe. That same year, Dutch–South African investment group Prosus (then Naspers) acquired 70% of eMAG, fueling its international push.
The company expanded to Bulgaria in 2012, Hungary in 2013, and Poland in 2014 (before exiting the latter in 2020). In Hungary, eMAG’s biggest strategic move came in 2019, when it acquired Extreme Digital. By 2022, the two platforms had fully merged under the eMAG brand.
