Amazon lost 50% of its Czech e-commerce revenue. Not once — twice, in two consecutive years. That's the data point that triggered this conversation. But the more interesting story isn't Amazon's decline. It's what that decline reveals about a region that Western e-commerce still fundamentally misreads.

David Cikanek is a Prague-based marketplace expert who has spent years helping brands navigate Amazon and the broader CEE landscape. In this episode, he pushes back hard on one of the most persistent myths in European e-commerce: that Central and Eastern Europe is one market with one strategy. It isn't. The Czech Republic spends per capita are comparable to the Netherlands. Poland has Allegro — a genuine platform giant with 30%+ market share. Romania had eMAG, once called the Amazon of the East, now quietly retreating while a Turkish challenger backed by Chinese money closes in. Hungary is behind the rest of the region in terms of online penetration. These are not variations on a theme. They are different markets.

We also get into why Temu is winning the region while Shein is losing, why Kaufland's marketplace expansion raises more questions than it answers amongst the locals, and why TikTok Shop is more likely to be an upper-funnel discovery tool than a structural threat.

This episode is for anyone who has ever looked at CEE on a map and thought: same region, same playbook. Spoiler: it isn't.

📊 The CZ marketplace data chart referenced in this episode: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7470062455113691137/