The death of the mail-order business?

Last week German retail holding Arcandor failed to find an investor for its mail-order subsidiary Quelle, Germany's second-largest mail-order and e-shopping outlet after Amazon. Despite a bailout from the German government, there was no entity interested in taking over the firm.

However, Quelle's Polish branch has been doing fairly well. In 2008 it was Poland's second-largest e-store in terms of visits to its main page, after Merlin.pl, and third in terms of unique visitors.

According to a report by Internet Standard, in 2008 Quelle.pl was the biggest clothing e-store in Poland, with sales revenues of about zł.11 million, while the company's total revenues in Poland amounted to about zł.120 million.

"Quelle Polska, as well as other profitable international branches of the company, is looking for an investor that would guarantee the continuity of the mail-order business in Poland," Piotr D´bski, a member of Quelle Polska's board, wrote in a statement.

Otto Versand, a long-time rival of Quelle in the German market and also present in Poland with its Bon Prix subsidiary and Bonprix.pl e-store, would seem to be a natural investor. However, the company has not commented on the possibility of a takeover.

While some market players feel the failure of such an important mail-order company shows that the internet is making catalog mail-order firms obsolete, Adam Zieliński, an expert at the Polish Direct Marketing Association (SMB), disagreed, saying that the internet complements the mail-order business.
"Please remember that the traditional catalog is still an important form of presenting an offer to a customer. More and more often people are buying online after browsing through a catalog," he told WBJ.
Mr Zieliński said he was optimistic about the future of mail-order companies.

Marcin Poznań