This summer South Africa’s Naspers group bought 70% in the retailer that posted almost EUR150 million sales last year.
“Considering our stability and the deals this year we can afford the luxury of thinking long term,” Stanciu said.
eMag has invested more than EUR200,000 in hardware and software over the past few months and its IT department now has 70 employees, as much as a medium-sized IT company, he added.
The investment was part of a program that started last year intended to enable to company’s infrastructure to handle huge server loads and a high number of calls to its call center during Black Friday when eMag may sell more than a small online IT&C retailer in one year.
The company also has its own research department. “It would be dangerous to do things just by a gut feeling. We can win or lose several thousand euros from a survey,” he said.
The change of shareholders was quick to influence the relationship with banks, even though it had been very good until then, Stanciu added.
“Banks have been supportive thus far but they used to watch every step we made very carefully and we had a lot of explaining to do. Now that the sun is shining on us, they came to us with about 20 umbrellas asking whether we needed them or not. We’ve moved in a different league.”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)