From untapped market to rapid user-base expansion
ongoing cooperation
Allegro, the biggest e‑commerce platform in Poland and one of most recognizable in Europe with almost 200 mln MAU, which exists for over 20 years. They wanted to overhaul the customer experience in the C2C segment. The idea was to maintain full B2C support in the Allegro platform and create a new one strictly for transactions between private customers — Allegro Lokalnie.
Allegro Lokalnie aimed to be the best place for casual merchants, providing a lightweight and tailor‑made process, streamlined selling experience along with providing competitive prices. And all of that under the Allegro umbrella — which meant customer safety built in the product DNA. These were key requirements that kickstarted our cooperation.
From the outset, Appunite's team demonstrated exceptional expertise and commitment. They seamlessly integrated into our development process, providing not just technical skills but also a sense of ownership over the project. This was crucial in fostering a collaborative environment where everyone felt invested in the product's success.
Allegro itself was focused on B2C relations, and aimed at putting the product at the center of the marketplace. They noticed, however, that this focus didn’t allow for frictionless C2C interactions, and that other platforms started to occupy this niche.
Allegro therefore decided to launch Allegro Lokalnie. The goal was to recapture a leading position in this niche through focusing the Lokalnie platform on the purchases, building its organic visibility and user retention.
Allegro Lokalnie at first functioned as a startup inside the larger Allegro ecosystem. We delivered the MVP to validate the business assumption that a platform in this format is something that market needs. But after this step we needed to take care of the platform’s visibility. At first we solved this by integrating Allegro Lokalnie with the main Allegro product. Offers from Allegro Lokalnie were appearing in the searches done on the main platform. But when the main platform started to shift focus to products, Allegro Lokalnie started to lose traffic. We solved this in a couple of ways, and now, though Allegro Lokalnie is an internal project, the product’s development development is comparable to evolving from startup bootstrapping to a C‑series funding level of operations.
We’ve been with Allegro Lokalnie since it’s beginning. Although it’s an internal project of the main Allegro, at the beginning it was functioning like startup bootstrapping. Now it’s a profitable enterprise. We couldn’t build this product if we weren’t able to integrate with Allegro Lokalnie’s culture and change with it. Such an extensive collaboration has many crucial decision‑making factors that create success, but we can point to a couple that are recurring.
Working with Appunite on the Allegro Lokalnie project was a transformative experience. As the CTO responsible for building Allegro Lokalnie from scratch, I was initially faced with the challenge of creating a scalable, future‑proof platform that could handle a large user base without competing for resources with Allegro's main platform. Appunite proved to be an invaluable partner in this endeavor.
From the outset, Appunite's team demonstrated exceptional expertise and commitment. They seamlessly integrated into our development process, providing not just technical skills but also a sense of ownership over the project. This was crucial in fostering a collaborative environment where everyone felt invested in the product's success.
One of the standout aspects of our collaboration was Appunite's flexibility and responsiveness. Whether it was rapidly scaling the team to meet changing requirements or ensuring that we met tight deadlines, Appunite consistently delivered. Their ability to provide additional resources on short notice was particularly impressive and ensured that we could maintain our development pace without compromising quality.
The decision to use Elixir as our technology stack, supported by Appunite's expertise, was pivotal. It allowed us to achieve remarkable performance and scalability, serving millions of users efficiently. The platform's architecture was designed to be adaptable, enabling us to pivot and implement innovative features like a chat‑based buyer‑seller interaction model.
Overall, Appunite's dedication to our project went beyond typical client‑vendor relationships. Their proactive approach, combined with their technical prowess, played a significant role in the success of Allegro Lokalnie. I highly recommend Appunite to any organization seeking a reliable and innovative software development partner.
Jarosław Żmudziński, CEO, Allegro Lokalnie