We launched Ananas in order to show that we ‘can’, that we have no excuses. All our resources are directed precisely towards that, towards doing business and cooperating with us being at the highest level,” notes Ananas CEO Marko Carević with pride, as well as announcing that the company will certainly be present around the entire region in five years.
What makes Ananas special, different and superior?
― We are first and foremost the region’s initiator/ driver of e-commerce in the region. Why do I say this? Because by September we’d already exceeded a million different visitors, and that growth is continuing, because we’re already operating on two markets and we launched this whole story completely from scratch, here in Belgrade.
We got to grips with the huge challenges confronting this market. We need only recall how the process unfolded: you order something, wait several days for confirmation, then your package arrives in around ten days if you’re lucky. And I won’t even mention returning goods. And what have we done? We’ve enabled delivery by as early as the next working day; we’ve enabled three options for deliveries, payments in cash, payments online, for registered companies, by business payment cards, invoicing, payment in instalments. We are working on the development of fintech services and, more importantly, we have provided the user with choice – as the only genuine marketplace, we are the only place where the same product can be bought from several different retailers and conditions can be compared in one place. We’ve thus ensured a flawless user experience and set new standards in e-commerce.
We will open the doors of the most modern e-fulfilment centre in this part of Europe at the start of next year
I would emphasise that we are still at the beginning. Our huge aeroplane has taken flight and we’re now stabilising – we’ve brought together the best team of experts on the market, we’re improving anything that doesn’t seem to be working flawlessly as we go, and we’re assembling all the parts of our ecosystem. And when we look back retrospectively every six months, we can only say: “Congratulations, we’re moving on”.
It was a year ago that you took the first step towards expanding your business, but your regional expansion isn’t stopping there?
― From the very first day of doing business, Ananas was announced as being a regional player, and in June we launched ananas.mk. And I can say that I’m extremely proud of all the successes our team has achieved in six months. By relying on experience from Serbia, we succeeded in utilising resources more effectively, learning more quickly from our mistakes and establishing processes and procedures in a significantly shorter period.
We will announce the next two markets on our route to internationalisation during 2024. We are already being invited to all conferences in the countries of the region to present what we’ve done and how we achieved it, and for attendees to hear our plans. With that in mind, I can only say that the internationalisation of our business isn’t an option, but rather an obligation.
Is it an accurate statistic that as many as 97 per cent of shipments from your warehouse have reached customers as early as the next working day?
― It is absolutely accurate. And that’s precisely what makes the essential difference between Ananas and any other online shopping site in Serbia. We will open the doors of the most modern e-fulfilment centre in this part of Europe at the start of next year. For our customers, this means that this percentage will remain at the same level regardless of the growth of our business, and that the quality of deliveries will not suffer. As a consequence, this will also have a great impact on our retailers and the growth of their business, with hundreds of them already holding part of their goods in our warehouse.
