Official Launch of our Services in Poland

TL;DR

• Eurosender launched services in Poland on October 6, 2016, at a UK Embassy mixer organized with the British-Polish Chamber of Commerce.
• The event emphasized the value of a UK presence post-Brexit and connections to UK Trade & Investment.
• Our founder discussed Eurosender’s origins, while our Polish country manager highlighted market opportunities and logistics partnerships.
• The mixer provided networking opportunities, addressing Polish market challenges and showcasing the country’s appeal for low-cost courier services.

Sometimes, many things are happening in your head at the same time, and you struggle to find ways to materialize them. This happened with to us when we were thinking of launching our services in Poland.

Eurosender lauch in Poland

By the courtesy of the British-Polish Chamber of Commerce, we organized a business mixer at the UK Embassy in Warsaw, Poland on October 6th, 2016. Just in time when we were planning the official launch of our services in Poland, this came as a huge opportunity. Not only because it provided us with an opportunity to launch our services in one of the most esteemed venues in Warsaw, but also because the UK Embassy was enthusiastic about having a business mixer as part of the event. Nothing excites us more than collaborating on something that involves discussing business ideas and inspirations. We enthusiastically started working towards making this business mixer event in Poland a success and we believe we succeeded.

There was also a faith of ours that was reaffirmed after this event. Lately, we are receiving lots of opinions about how it is not a good idea to have an entity in the UK after Brexit. Thankfully, our founders had the far-sightedness of realizing that it is still relevant and important to have an entity in the UK.

You should already know about the competitive tax rate schemes in UK, but the fact that it has a relatively stable economic system for both investors and companies ensures that opportunities are always endless. We will give you two examples here to prove just that. First of all, joining hands with the technology accelerator Level39 gave us access to London’s fintech and smart hub – Canary Wharf – that needs absolutely no introduction. It is a great time to be here, learning from other businesses thriving here, as well as with the big organizations that form an important part of the Canary Wharf business hub.

Moreover, Level39 itself is a great place for young businesses to learn mutually. Where else will one find that opportunity if not in Europe’s largest technology accelerator?

Secondly, having a business entity in the UK gave us access to UKTI or UK Trade & Investment (now known as Department of International Trade). This is a governmental department dedicated to help businesses in the UK for their endeavors in international markets. They help businesses acquire the skills, contacts and confidence to break into new markets. In our case, also, they have helped us in more than one way.

We have dedicated contacts that visit us at regular monthly intervals, to update us about new opportunities. There are many deals that we have either converted due to those updates provided by them or we are in the process of doing it. They have also supported us with contacting and networking in the UK Embassy, as a result of this event. The official launch of our services was in Warsaw, Poland, at the British Polish Chamber of Commerce.

The event was very fruitful for us because the organization of the whole event was very smooth. Our founder got the chance to present how the idea of Eurosender happened when he was himself studying in Warsaw and wanted to send his stuff back home in Slovenia. He followed this issue with Eurosender’s offerings, business model, its competitive factors in front of people from the British Polish Chamber of Commerce, along with some of Warsaw’s student and startup world audience. This was followed by our Polish country manager sharing details specific to the Polish market, including numbers about Poland expats, their strongest diasporas in Poland, etc.

The best part of these discussions was that we were assured that we were addressing the right audience at this event. For example, we discussed how the China to Poland train route takes 13 days for transport, how shipping via sea is cheaper and takes a lot of time (unlike air transport), and how this could be optimized.

The representatives of several logistics companies and other relevant stakeholders were present at the event. They were keenly interested in these lines of thought. We were also extremely keen on researching whether we could connect EU and Asia for our customers through such partnerships. This event opened doors for many relevant partnerships and networking opportunities for us. Especially due to the involvement of the UK Embassy, we could manage to reach their network of influential connections.

Our discussions, the speech by our founder and the Q&A that followed was especially engaging, as we focused specifically on challenges faced by Polish markets. For example, getting access to the Polish market is not that easy because you have to deal with old bureaucracy at times. The road infrastructure is also underdeveloped.

We discussed the favorable conditions that make Poland an attractive market, like cheap prices available of courier services (or anything in general) and how it is a tempting place for expats because of its low cost of living and relatively OK tax exemption policies. This is exciting news for us and, therefore, we want to bring to Poland our services for its popular routes within EU (for now) like Poland-Portugal, Poland-Germany and so on.

We are really satisfied that this event in Poland proved to be such a fruitful experience for us in more than one way. Honestly, even just having such an engaged and relevant audience sometimes makes you feel elated. This event left us with so much more, opening doors for new opportunities and partnerships. This only makes us look forward to our next launch and other events that we may want to plan in future.

Watch the video from the event below and do not hesitate to visit our Youtube channel!

We also got covered by Forbes, Poland.