Merlin.pl \Poland

Merlin.pl was Poland's pioneering e-commerce marketplace, launched in 1999 during the first dot-com wave. As one of the earliest publicly-traded internet companies on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, Merlin attempted to build a comprehensive online shopping destination for Polish consumers at a time when internet penetration was <5%, credit card adoption was minimal, and logistics infrastructure for e-commerce was virtually non-existent. The 'why now' was premature—they bet on internet commerce 5-10 years before the Polish market had the foundational infrastructure (broadband, payment rails, consumer trust, last-mile delivery) to support sustainable growth. Merlin positioned itself as a horizontal marketplace aggregating multiple product categories, competing directly with emerging players like Allegro.pl (founded 1999) which took a C2C auction approach inspired by eBay. The value proposition was 'bring retail online' but the execution required building every layer of the stack—payment processing, merchant onboarding, warehouse fulfillment, customer service—in a market where consumers still preferred cash-on-delivery and in-person transactions. The company raised significant capital through its public listing but burned through resources trying to educate a market that wasn't ready, while simultaneously fighting better-capitalized competitors who pivoted faster to marketplace models with lower inventory risk.