Selling on Allegro from UK

Hi All,
I am starting a business and would want to sell to the Polish market from UK via allegro.pl or ebay.pl. I am learning Polish from my wife who will help me with listings but I have some few issues I will need help on. Any feedback will be welcomed.

1. Is it feasible to post items from UK quickly to buyer in Poland without creating a warehouse in poland?
2. How effective is the payment by post system used in Poland. is the time difference from payment so long that it makes running an online business unfeasible?

3. Just to make the next question clearer, I will be selling computers. Do I have to get Polish specific versions of the computers or the english versions , which is what I have at the moment, from my supplier will be fine.

Best Regards

Hi

I am doing a similar thing the other way around - I sell to the UK and ship from Poland. In my experience:

1. Recorded express delivery takes 4 to 5 working days. I have more problems with Royal Mail than I do with Poczta Polska. However the tracking is very poor - if something gets lost I have to wait 28 days before they will investigate. Once a parcel got lost and they managed to find it but it took weeks. There is no online tracking or anything like that.

Alternatively you could use couriers to ship from the UK but I suspect that that will be prohibitively expensive unless you ship in large volume.

2. You get the payment straight away pretty much and seems to work well. COD seems to be a very popular option in Poland.

3. Of the computers? Or of the software that I presume is bundled with the computers? I would expect most buyers would want a Polish keyboard etc...

Good luck with your new venture.

I must say that Polish websites in general are a chore to sign up to. I signed up to Allegro about a month ago and was horrified to discover that they send you an activation code in the post. As if this wasn't mind-numbing enough, I never did receive anything in the post.

Thank you so much..This is a huge encouragement for me..just a thought on the third point..
getting keyboards with Polish layouts will not be a problem but the operating system itself running in english...will that be a major issue?

My wife is got an account on there so we can use hers for now. However i cant think of why they would want to send activation code via postage..any reason for that?

I am also thinking about creating a website instead but I do not know if that is a good market in Poland..any thoughts? I am a programmer so that will not cost me apart from time.

best regards

yes, if I buy a computer in Polish I would expect the O/S to be in Polish. I would expect the average Pole too also.


to prove that you provided a valid address as a security check. Poland is much more bureaucratic than the UK.


a website for what? I have a couple of Polish websites (I run a website company too) so feel free to bounce your ideas around.

This business will fail. Sorry to say but anything you can do is going to be undercut by someone. The lost post...scams with payment...and other nonsense will drive you mad. It's your money to risk but this is not a wise move.

There is no such thing as polish keyboard :-) We use the same ones as you in UK/US - English qwerty.

and you can sells computers without operating system or with linux installed ... just write it clearly in your auction.

esek
Thanks for the clarification. I was thinking there would be special keyboards with the special polish characters wriiten on it...anyway that was a good clarification. Maybe instaed of going with whole systems, i could do only parts

@tj123
Thanks for your point, but dont you think if we setup the process properly and streamlined some of them, some of these problems can be solved?

Honestly...I think there is so much of a market locally and so many people selling computers etc online that it's not a safe bet. Combine that with the pitfalls and scams and I know a lot of people who have tried such things and given up as it was a loser. Just dont put yourself out there too much...id not risk a large sum of money on it.

no problem... yes we have special characters in Polish language but they aren't written on the keyboard... every pole knows that if s/he want to write (for example) ł character then s/he have to press right alt + l

that's it :)


yeah... it could make the price a bit lower and your auctions would be even more attractive.

@tj123
Exactly that is why I want to step into that market..the fact that there is a market is all that is important. the challenges are what seperate enterpreneurs from consumers. I'm sure there is a way to make money there. Given the saturation of items on ebay.co.uk, you would think no new business can be started there..well my wife just buys crap from charity shop and list it there and make some very good returns even though its not a proper business so she doesn't take it very serious. So I'm sure there is a market there worth exploring. I had a look at the price margins on allegro for the kind of stuf I want to sell and realised if I managed to sell an Item there, I would make a lot of profit. the only challenge is setting the process in place, identifying the market behaviour and adapting to it and that is exactly why am here..

best regards

No, not exactly the same. The letters are the same but not the symbols and symbol locations.

In fact I have a keyboard bought in Poland, and one from the UK. There are some differences such as having a dollar sign and not pound sign above the number 4 and the ampersand sign and double quotes are inverted. Also my Polish keyboard is missing the squiggly dash ~. Apart from that and a few more symbols in different places they are the same.

Whether these differences are significant or not is a different matter though.

this is what we use - okay, it's US-like (dollar instead of pound):

Thank you guys for all the insight. I think the best way will be to sell generic products where language will not be a major factor such as Dvd-drives, processors and motherboards

what do you think..will the instruction manuals still have to be in polish

yes... in theory our law require to attach Polish instruction to every electronic product... but usually say motherboard vendors give manuals in several languages so it shouldn't be a problem.

that settles my doubts and I feel I have a chance. Thank you all for sharing..Since I'm still looking for business opportunities, any window of opportunity that anyone wishes to share such as a potential market in poland is very much welcomed.

No problem... to be honest with you - I don't think that selling compuers (or parts) in Poland is a good business opportunity. There are plenty of computer shops in Poland, some well-known online ones and generally speaking prices are quite low... it's hard to believe that you will have much lower prices... and what is important many people want to be sure that they can return some broken devices without any problems... that's why many of them prefer to buy things in local/well-known computer shops...

I have no idea what is the best business to invest in in Poland at this time... maybe someone else will give you some ideas.

Instead of being a foolhardy, i thinks its probably better to look at something else or look in another direction. One day I will get another Idea and will float it here.. Thanks to you all.

I am thinking if I will not be able to do it, its better to let u guys know the source in case you are interested..what do you think?

There is a company in Manchester selling new and reconditioned Dell computers on Allegro and were even recruiting for a Polish speaker to deal exclusively with this market.

So I guess there is a profit to be made.

Related: Setting up a company on allegro.pl from the UK


They are normally written three digits, three digits, two digits, two digits.