What paths are they talking about? The latest move, the opening of the fourth showroom in Cluj, underlines the shift of eMAG from a purely online model to an online and offline combination. Traditional stores should generate about 20% of the business, if not more next year. In Cluj, following a less than 50,000-euro investment in a 120 square metre store, eMAG expects to see sales reach 3 million euros for those orders delivered to the showroom in the first year, that is 25,000 euros per square metre.

The total display area, however, stands at almost 1,500 square metres, with the Bucharest showroom alone accounting for 1,000 square metres of the total, while the rest are divided among the showrooms in Ia[i, (200 square metres) and Ploie[ti (150 square metres). The 40,000 people expected to set foot in these four stores and the almost 25,000 that buy over the Internet could pick up 37.5 million euros' worth of products from the showroom in one year.

"Still, the plan is not to migrate sales to stores, but only to establish a presence in major cities of the country, because opening a showroom may help sales triple in that particular area," explains Bogdan Vlad, general manager of eMAG. The company is considering the possibility to open more showrooms in Timi[oara, Constanta, Craiova and Bra[ov. Beyond figures, expansion to the mortar and bricks segment is justified by the consumer behaviour.

Instead of doing their research about the product they want in traditional stores and then order it from an online store, where the price is lower, clients obviously prefer to do it the other way round - they make their choice on the Internet, where they can easily compare products and read the opinions of other users and buy from traditional stores. "This is a phenomenon we call ROPO - research online, purchase offline, which describes the behaviour of 70% of those that go to online stores," Apostolescu says.

Online retailers are no longer growing in one year as much as they used to grow in four. To them, time has come to regroup - either by redesigning the business model or by alliances and acquisitions meant to preserve their position on the market.