More than 50% of stock-office premise tenants are engaged in trading (retail or wholesale). Therefore, we had a closer look at the segment’s recent developments in Estonia as the hotspot of the stock-office segment.

The pandemic acted as an accelerator for online sales, as e-commerce quickly responded to the challenges by ensuring customers continued access to products and services. Businesses’ investments in digitalisation grew rapidly, with digitalisation plans initially planned over several years being implemented in a matter of months. As a result, European e-commerce grew to 718 billion euros with a growth rate of 13% in 2021.

Estonia was the fastest growing country in the EU and experienced an impressive growth of 49% in 2021. According to data issued by Estonian Central Bank, e-purchases of goods and services totalled at 2.6 billion euros in 2021.

It is worth noting that in 2021, each month’s transactions volume was higher than the same month a year ago and the same trend continued in 2022. Digital sales broke the record and beat the previous year by 1 billion euros, showing an impressive growth rate of 37%.

This is not a result of solely higher prices of local goods and services, because the remarkably increased number of transactions (+28% in 2022) is a sign of an increased purchase quantities.

The fact that e-commerce sales continued to rise after the restrictions were lifted shows, that retail segment is amid major structural changes and e-commerce development is playing a key role in the sector’s growth. Consumers, many of whom had not gone online before, have seen the benefits and convenience of e-commerce and shopping online is becoming “a new normal”.

It’s essential to adapt to this new normal and in our experience, traders have not only established their e-shops, but taken the next step and began optimizing their delivery chains, which has resulted in great demand for stock-office type commercial premises in Estonia.