As e-commerce in Europe surges to new heights, online retailers are facing an urgent challenge that threatens to derail their growth: data chaos.
With e-commerce revenues in countries like Poland, Romania, and Czechia growing by double digits and marketplaces such as Allegro and eMAG expanding rapidly, businesses are struggling to manage the flood of product data required to stay competitive across digital channels. Industry experts say that Product Information Management (PIM) solutions are now essential for navigating this new landscape.
Ecommerce growth brings data complexity
The shift to digital shopping in Eastern and Central Europe has been staggering. In 2023, e-commerce turnover across Eastern Europe increased by approximately 15 per cent, far outpacing the stagnation seen in Western markets, according to the European Ecommerce Report 2024. Romania saw a 51 per cent increase in online retail sales, while Estonia doubled its ecommerce output.
Poland has emerged as the region’s e-commerce powerhouse, ranked the 21st largest global e-commerce market, generating over 16 billion euros in revenue. Czechia leads Central Europe in online retail penetration, with 14 per cent of retail spending occurring online.
But this rapid expansion has created a parallel crisis. The complexity of managing massive product catalogs, constantly changing prices, multilingual content, and multi-platform distribution has overwhelmed many businesses. Retailers are now juggling thousands of SKUs across multiple marketplaces, storefronts, and marketing channels – often without a centralised strategy to manage the chaos.
Disconnected systems, siloed teams, and human errors
“As ecommerce in Europe accelerates, many companies are reaching a breaking point in how they manage product information,” says Sergii Shvets, CEO at Gepard PIM. “We’re seeing companies with excellent growth potential slowed down by inefficient, error-prone manual processes.”
The problem is systemic. Product data is often stored in spreadsheets, ERPs, supplier feeds, and disconnected content management systems. Each sales channel – from a brand’s webstore to third-party marketplaces – demands different data formats, creating a massive operational burden. A 2024 Forrester Consulting study found that 83 per cent of e-commerce leaders admitted their product data is “incomplete, inconsistent, inaccurate, unstructured, or outdated.”
Manual updates across platforms frequently lead to inconsistencies, like price mismatches or missing translations – all of which damage customer trust, SEO rankings, and conversion rates. In some cases, poor product data even results in compliance issues and regulatory penalties.
PIM solutions offer a path forward
To restore order, a growing number of retailers in emerging Europe are turning to PIM systems. These platforms centralise, structure, enrich, and distribute product data, ensuring that every digital channel — from websites to marketplaces to social media – displays consistent, accurate information.
“PIM is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for ecommerce businesses operating across multiple markets and languages — it’s a necessity,” says Sergii. “You can’t scale if your data isn’t scalable.”
One such platform leading the charge in the region is Gepard PIM, a simple, AI-powered PIM and product content syndication solution tailored for fast-growing e-commerce companies in Europe. Gepard enables businesses to manage vast product catalogs in one place, automating data distribution to over more than 250 e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, Google Shopping, Allegro, eMAG, and more.
Why Gepard PIM stands out
Gepard PIM’s flexible, API-first architecture allows companies to:
Zero data chaos with AI-driven automation. Import, transform, enrich, and distribute – No manual fixes. No missed opportunities..
Easily scale whenever you need. Quickly adapt your PIM flows as your business grows or flows change.
Smoothly expand reach to 250+ channels. Accelerate time-to-market and simplify managing multiple sales channels via any-to-any connections.
Transparent pricing. No surprises. No hidden costs. Freemium version available.
Simple and intuitive. Get started fast – no steep learning curves.
Automated compliance checks. Stay aligned with GPSR, EPREL, and other regulations and standards.
Retailers using Gepard PIM report up to 75 per cent increases in operational efficiency, reduced catalog management overhead, and faster onboarding to new sales channels — a crucial factor for companies expanding regionally or globally.
The future of e-commerce belongs to data-driven retailers
As e-commerce in Europe matures, the winners will not be the ones with the most products – but the ones with the most organised, accurate, and agile product data. With growing consumer expectations and marketplace competition, speed, consistency, and localisation are the new battlegrounds. Solutions like Gepard PIM offer retailers the ability to stay ahead of the curve.
“We believe that in the future, product content will be as important as the product itself,” says Sergii “If your information is inconsistent, you’re invisible. Gepard is here to help retailers in Europe and beyond ensure their product data becomes a competitive advantage.”
Photo: Dreamstime.
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