Baltic, Good for Business, Internet, Markets and Companies, Retail

"We neither wish nor dare to name a date yet, but active work is in progress. As far as I know, none of the e-retailers are earning any profit yet in Estonia. We are prepared for this to rather be an investment in the future -- this business plan needs to be looked at in a four to five-year perspective," manager of Rimi Estonia Vaido Padumae said. 

Even though online food trade is growing nearly 40% per year, large retail chains still bear the cost of home delivery.

"We were shopping for over 10,000 people each month as early as last fall. [Our] example of e-commerce today demonstrates that it is as if we have created an extra store in addition to the Selver stores," Gunnar Obolenski, head of e-commerce at Selver, said.

Growth in the first years nearly doubled each year, he said.

"Now that the reference volume has become very large, the growth is 30 to 40% per year," Obolenski added.

"Sadly, it does not currently pay off business-wise, but we regard it as important value added," Teemu Kilpia, director of operations of Prisma hypermarkets in Estonia, said. Kilpia opined that such business is not sustainable and that in terms of profitability, changes in pricing are on their way.

Selver, Prisma and Maxima offer free home delivery if the order exceeds 40 euros, whereas Coop provides the same service for purchases starting from 25 euros.