Slevomat Group, Cherry Media form Central Europe’s largest online daily deals group

Prague, Tallin (Pressweb) - 22th December 2011: Slevomat Group and Cherry Media, the leaders of online daily deals industry in Central and Eastern Europe, have agreed to form the region’s largest group of daily deals companies with 2011 turnover exceeding 60 million Euros. This takes it among the largest internet companies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE1).

The agreement involves Slevomat taking a stake in Cherry’s equity and operational cooperation across the region. Cherry’s and Slevomat’s representatives will join each other’s boards and work on integration of the companies. Both parties started to cooperate already in May of 2011.

Cherry and Slevomat are the leaders of their industries in the Baltics and Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, respectively. Last month, the group served 2700 deals to almost two million subscribers in seven CEE countries.

“Both companies were looking for expansion in Central Europe and teaming up was the most logical step. We have the best management teams in the region and have now got great opportunity to gain a scale for region-wide deals,” said Tomáš Čupr, Chief Executive Officer of Slevomat.

“We have quickly discovered that founders of both companies share common background and passion for this business,” said Aldas Kirvaitis, CEO of Cherry Media. “We will unlock synergies through exchange of best practices, developing and testing of new technologies and products and carrying out CEE-wide campaigns. It will make us an even stronger partner to our customers and merchants.”

Both companies emerged in early 2010 and quickly established themselves as market leaders in their countries. “We consider the essential phase of consolidation across Central Europe successfully completed.  Slevomat Group now presents a formation of market leaders across seven countries in CEE,” said Tomáš Matějček, from MITON, one of the investors in Slevomat. “However, we cannot rule out additional consolidation efforts in the region in future,” he added.

“Daily deals business has been the fastest-growing subsector of internet industry both globally and in CEE,” said Allan Martinson, investor in Cherry Media. “It started as „Wild West“ of internet with hundreds of companies trying their luck but the leaders were established very quickly and consolidation is now taking place.”

The daily deals business model originates from the U.S. where it was pioneered in 2008 by Groupon, the fastest-growing company in internet’s history. 

Similarly, Slevomat Group and Cherry Media have reached 8 million euros in combined monthly turnover in less than 18 months. Each month, Slevomat and Cherry Media enable millions of people to discover new restaurants, spas, concerts, travel operators and benefit from steep discounts which may be as high as 70% from the regular price. More than 8000 merchants across seven Central and European countries have used this unique and extremely effective advertising channel to promote their goods or services so far.

Slevomat and Cherry plan to nearly double its turnover in 2012 from 60 m EUR in 2011 and expand into local commerce and discounted retail. “We see no slowdown. We are constantly innovating and expanding into new product categories such as goods or travel,” said Tomáš Čupr, CEO of Slevomat.

For consumers across Central Europe, Slevomat and Cherry Media joining forces will mean even better and more diverse selection of attractive deals every day. For merchants it will result in ever improving service level, experience transfer and access to seven national markets with a combined population of 40 million people.

Additional Information:
Slevomat Group: 
Petr Kapalín
petr.kapalin@intensity.cz
+420 777 025 771

Cherry Media:
Martin Koiva
martin@cherry.ee 
+372 557 1189

Slevomat Group:
Slevomat Group comprises of local e-commerce companies across 7 countries, namely Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria. The companies belonging to the Group operate market leading sites such as Slevomat, Bonusz Brigad, Cherry, Beta.lt or Zlavomat. Today, the Group registered subscribers have exceeded 2 million and the Group serves its customers in 39 cities.

1) CEE does not include the Russian Federation