Business Ideas in Romania

It’s my birthday and I can cry if I want to….but not because I did not receive a gift

• Posted by Anca on May 10th, 2007 filed in IT & Telecommunications, Retail, Services

Opportunity: On-line store with gifts for special occasions
The on-line market in Romania is continuously growing. Statistics show that for the last year, the market grew with 17.9% and people are more familiar with the idea of shopping on-line. There are now some well-known online stores that are doing quite well.
On-line shopping for gifts is not totally unheard of here. There are some web-sites like www.cadouri.ro or www.floriintimisoara.ro that offer the possibility to send gifts or flowers to the doorsteps of your beloved. It’s nice indeed, but there is a niche market that is not very well addressed.
There are about four million Romanians working outside of the country. All of them have friends and family in Romania. A good opportunity would be to establish a network of virtual stores in Romania but also abroad (marketed in areas of significant diaspora). Romanians abroad and also foreigners -There are many foreigners who visited or used to live in Romania who still have contacts and friends that live here - would have the opportunity to send gifts to people in Romania and vice versa.
www.cadouri.ro offers a wide variety of gifts where you can pick and choose but, unfortunately, it does not have an English version and the prices are listed only in RON, so practically… it addresses only Romanian speakers.
www.floriintimisoara.ro is focused on offering flowers via a national network and includes an English version….but you can only send flowers, teddy bears and candies.

A big opportunity - as we have often mentioned - is that there will soon be available non-reimbursable funds that could be accessed by companies for acquisition and implementation of e-commerce solutions. The financing could get up to 500,000 Euros.

Any ideas?