Marcin is with us. Marcin is a strategist who led CCC and Modivo through the greatest digital transformation in their history. Marcin, tell me, how important were social media in this whole transformation?
Social media were an important element in repositioning the CCC brand from a traditional entity that didn't rely on digital sales and positioned itself, you could say, toward a customer who was guided only by their wallet, toward customers who chose quality and looked for fashion products. And that social media strategy and influencer strategy as part of our entire digital transformation were very prominent elements.
And when did this really start? Because you mentioned — we were talking a bit earlier and you mentioned that it was quite early in your case.
We need to separate two issues in CCC's case. CCC started its own e-commerce in the years 2016 to 2019. That's quite a long period and you could say a range — I'm providing it intentionally. 2016 is the acquisition of eobuwie. It's also the time when I joined. And 2019 is the launch of the own e-commerce. Over this period, CCC went from zero zlotys generated in digital sales to 6 billion, so quite a spectacular jump. As for social media, I wasn't at CCC yet then, but when I opened the archives, I think CCC was a front-runner when it came to influencer policy and social media policy. And it already appeared in some Instagram campaigns back then, when, as we discussed, I at least thought Instagram was for photo editing, not for social media — so the early 2010s. I would say even around 2012, 2014. I would say it might have even been a bit too early in relation to when the customer was ready for it and how the customer behaved.
Okay. The market wasn't prepared for it yet.
So some budget burning on these activities?
I don't know. Probably not necessarily, because those were also good years for CCC. I'd rather say that for CCC it was important to catch up on commercial sales in order to be able to use such activities effectively. Well, all of this changed over time. It's probably hard to see how all of this functioned back then, but probably how it had a real impact on sales. One didn't expect that digital sales and how they would be stimulated by this social media and influencer policy — what scale it would achieve, as it has today.
And here we're talking about scale, and I read somewhere in recent interviews with you that you say that scaling — well, scaling in general — has stopped being the holy grail. Yes. I'll obviously relate this to social media, so for example burning budgets on performance marketing, focusing on numbers, doesn't have such big significance anymore.
Yes, yes, that's the simplest way to answer. You have to remember that between 2020, pre-COVID, and today, Polish e-commerce, e-commerce sales in total grew twofold, more or less from 70 billion to 150 billion. But in that time, customer acquisition costs tripled. The return rate in the fashion industry grew from about 30% on average in some categories to 50%. So today, scaling no longer gives such marginal profitability growth as it used to. So today we're more about wisely managing profitability building and customer retention within communities.
Exactly. Mhm. Okay. And the very presence in social media — so being at the heart of the community, not just the scale of performance — doesn't it make business harder because we have to play more on emotions than on hard numbers?
It's harder, especially because you have to remember that —
Yes, but it went even deeper in understanding how this digital sales work, but not only that. Because social media and this influencer strategy don't just serve that. You have to remember that these are phenomena that emerged about 20 years ago. Yes, just like you have this anniversary here — so 20 years ago Twitter was created, 20 years ago Google acquired YouTube, 20 years ago Facebook opened as a platform. Only then could we join it. And for a certain age group, and I certainly don't belong to it, that was a moment when we could still absorb this — okay, this has changed, we know a different world, now it's different. But for many great Polish founders who grew up in the analog world and matured in the analog world, this is still a domain that isn't entirely understandable.
You think there are still such companies?
I think so — who haven't found themselves in this new reality.
Exactly. And they still think that building a brand using social media or Instagram can be a waste of money.
I think in some industries it might really be so, but we're talking about very specific niches.
Yes, yes, yes. But I wouldn't really say that it's...
I wouldn't say it's a niche. I think this phenomenon occurs quite often — it's hard to estimate. Of course...
You know, I'm stuck in a social media bubble. [laughter]
