interview An interview with Eduard Míka
The online shopping market in the Czech Republic is growing. How is Mall.cz doing these days? If you mean by market share then that’s hard to say, because there actually are no objective data about the Czech market. However, Mall. cz grew in the last fiscal year, year-on-year, by thirty five percent. In April we began a new fiscal year with a consolidated growth within the group by 40 percent and also noted a comparable development within the Czech Republic. Will the consolidation of the market continue? Is Mall.cz looking for some purchases? Consolidation happens in every industry field sooner or later. In times of the greatest boom, there were over 30,000 internet shops in the Czech Republic. It’s apparent that such a number is not sustainable long-term. In my opinion, there are currently only three players who have a longterm perspective – Mall.cz, Alza.cz and Czech Computer (Czc.cz). I don’t think that another local e-shop could seriously compete with these three in the retail area. In view of this, we’re looking more in other countries in terms of further geographic expansion. You personally joined Mall.cz as an investor in 2002. Since then, several other financial investors and finally even a strategic investor have joined the company. Still, you stayed in the firm. It’s not typical for the original owners to settle for managerial positions, despite being partial shareholders. First of all, I wouldn’t dare to say about myself that I’m a manager. If I were to hold a standard managerial position in the Mall or actually in Netretail Holding, I wouldn’t have been there for a long time. But Naspers still isn’t a corporation, it works as a holding structure and the companies within this structure have considerable independence, so the capital investment of Naspers didn’t change the function of Mall.cz very much. I would be a short-sighted investor if I got rid of my share when I expect further steep growth in its value. And, besides that, it’s fun for me.
We Wouldn’t Survive Without Technologies “In the future, over a half of all sales in the retail segments will be over the internet,” says Eduard Míka, a shareholder and a board member of Netretail Holding, the company that owns and operates Mall.cz Photo: Archive
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How does the collaboration with Naspers, the strategic investor, work? Right now, Naspers operates more like a financial investor. As I said, this is a global conglomerate of many companies that currently works as a holding structure. With the exception of exchanging experiences with other online retailers within the group, you can’t even talk about any collaboration. No doubt, there will eventually be a consolidation of the actual entities into a unified structure, but it’s still in the beginnings. What’s the long-term trend in the development of internet shops? Is the development headed to more universal shops, such as Mall.cz or Alza.cz or is it keener on specialization? Much like Amazon, Mall.cz wants to be a universal shop where customers find almost