Four ways entering the Polish market eats your budget
We've seen all four with clients, and lived through the first two ourselves at Surf Inc. Each one costs you the same thing: 4-10 weeks of build and a quarter of budget, after which you still don't know whether the market can support itself.
Translation instead of the numbers
The store gets translated into Polish, campaigns go live, and a quarter later it turns out that with Polish delivery costs and return rates the margin is negative. The order was backwards.
Returns assumed at home-market levels
Return rates can differ many times over between markets, and for clothing and footwear that's what decides profitability. Assuming your home market's rate is the most common mistake in the model.
Polish-language support bolted on at the end
Campaigns launch, enquiries come in in Polish, and a machine translator answers them two days late. The cost of that improvisation shows up in the reviews, not the budget.
Tax and compliance discovered after the fact
Polish VAT registration, returns rules, mandatory disclosure requirements. We don't settle these for your tax advisor, but we put them in the numbers and the timeline, because discovering them after launch stalls sales.
Entry strategy: Allegro, your own store, or both?
Four ways to enter the Polish market, each with a different starting cost and a different risk to your margin.
| Entry route | Starting cost | Biggest risk |
|---|---|---|
| Marketplace (Allegro, Amazon, Zalando) | Low | Commission, and no relationship with the customer |
| Your own store in Polish | Medium | Acquisition cost from zero |
| Both channels in parallel | High | Price and stock drifting out of sync |
| Selling into Poland without localisation | Very low | Low conversion, high returns |
Starting cost isn't the same as the cost of the market
Allegro's commission is the smallest of its costs, and that's the most common thing missed in the models we see. You also need returns handled under the platform's own rules, customer service in Polish, translated product pages and Polish VAT. Working that out for one platform is part of the market model, not a separate project.
What the project is made of: the store, logistics, campaigns
We don't sell entry into Poland as a single package, because it's made up of services priced separately, alongside localising the store and measuring margin. Below are the ones that come up most often.
E-commerce consulting
The margin numbers and the call on whether Poland is worth entering at all. This is the right first step, not a build.
View ›Online stores
A Polish-language version, local currency, local payments and InPost delivery, on the PrestaShop and WooCommerce platforms.
View ›Product feed
Product data prepared for product campaigns and for Allegro and other marketplaces in Poland.
View ›Advertising campaigns
Google, Meta and the other channels run specifically for Poland, because acquisition cost here can be nothing like your home market.
View ›Analytics and margin
Measurement split by market, tied to profit after delivery and returns, not to revenue.
View ›Content in Polish
Descriptions, content and organic visibility in Poland, run as its own plan, not a translation of your home-market copy.
View ›Step by step: from the numbers to your first order
Four stages, and a decision after each one on whether to continue. The timeframes below are the range from our own projects, not a promise.
- 1
The numbers and the go/no-go decision
2-4 weeks
Delivery and return costs, Polish VAT, the competition and acquisition cost for your category. The result is a recommendation on whether to enter Poland at all.
- 2
Preparing the store
4-10 weeks
The Polish-language version, local currency, local payments, InPost delivery, tax and disclosure requirements. The scope depends on how much of this your platform already handles out of the box.
- 3
Launching sales
from the first month
Campaigns, the product feed and Polish-language customer service. We start with a test budget to check the numbers against real orders.
- 4
The decision to scale
after 1-2 quarters
We decide whether to scale Poland, hold it steady, or close it down. We calculate the same numbers as at the start, but now on your real orders, not assumptions.
Entering Poland is a decision you can't cheaply undo
Entering a foreign market costs the most when you have to pull out of it after a year: you're left with carrier contracts, stock sitting in a warehouse abroad and a brand nobody there has heard of. You choose an advisor for a decision like that for the same reason you read reviews before surgery. Clutch calls the reviewer before it publishes their opinion of JustIdea.
weighted average of 224 reviews across three platforms. Clients gave them, and each site below links to the profile with the full text of every review.
Read the reviews
Competition and acquisition cost: what our numbers are based on
The biggest risk when entering a new market is numbers taken from reports instead of from the tools themselves. Below are three statuses that give JustIdea access to data on the Polish market specifically, and you can verify every one of them with the issuer.
Google Premier Partner
Access to search volume and ad-competition data for Poland specifically. When you're deciding on a market, it lets us estimate the cost of acquiring a customer before you spend your first euro there, and that's usually the number that decides everything.
PrestaShop Expert ★★★
The highest tier of the agency programme. For a version in Polish and in the local currency, that means we know what the platform handles by default and what needs writing, so the build quote doesn't grow midway through.
Microsoft Advertising Elite Partner
Bing's share in Poland can differ from your home market, and we check that in the platform itself, not in a report. Access to Microsoft's tools lets us include this channel in the Poland model instead of skipping it out of habit.
