2025: A Year of Conscious Adjustments. Reflections and Setup.pl’s Outlook for 2026

23.12.2025 | Anna Konopa, CEO Setup.pl | PL version available here

For e-commerce, 2025 was a year of course corrections, difficult decisions, and shifting perspectives. In this personal yet substantive reflection, Anna Konopa shares insights from a year that demanded flexibility from sellers, agencies, and brand owners alike. It is a multi-perspective view on cross-border commerce, strategic decisions, private label development, and the challenges the industry is carrying into 2026. Anna Konopa is the CEO of Setup.pl, a 360° e-commerce agency operating for over 15 years in Poland and Germany. Together with her team, she combines in-house sales operations and the development of three proprietary brands with end-to-end execution for companies expanding internationally and building omnichannel structures. She is also a member of the Council of the Polish Chamber of Digital Economy and a lecturer at the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH).

Not every year can be described or summarized from a single point of view. 2025 was a time when decisions had to be made simultaneously across different layers of the market: where sales performance matters, where others are advised, and where proprietary brands are built. In such a setup, distance is hard to maintain, as the consequences of decisions become visible immediately and in several areas at once.

That is why this year’s summary is more personal in nature. It is not an analysis of a single business model, but an attempt to organize the experiences gathered throughout 2025, at a time when market changes were forcing course corrections faster than ever before.

The end of the year is, for me, a moment to pause — though not a sentimental one. Rather, it is a time to put decisions in order and look at them from a distance. That is exactly what 2025 was about. Changes that were not always spectacular, but carried long-term significance. Adjustments driven by market reality, rather than by a desire to hold on to earlier assumptions at all costs.

A Year That Changed the Questions Being Asked

In 2025, e-commerce operated in a far more challenging environment than just a few years earlier. Pressure from platforms in the Far East, geopolitical tensions, uncertainty across global supply chains, and economic slowdown in Europe led many companies to stop asking, “How fast can we grow?” and start asking, “How can we grow at all?”

This was particularly visible in the German market. While Germany is facing real economic challenges, it remains the most important export market for Polish companies and a key reference point for cross-border sales in Europe. It is a demanding market, highly sensitive to process quality, yet at the same time stable and predictable. In 2025, that stability alone became a value for many businesses.

Decisions Years in the Making

For Setup.pl, 2025 was not defined by a single breakthrough decision, but rather by the culmination of many earlier observations. One of the most symbolic changes was stepping away from exclusive distribution of PlentyONE after five years of cooperation. Not because anything had stopped working — our own sales operations and Fulfillment by Setup.pl continue to run on PlentyONE — but because the market and our clients increasingly need flexibility rather than a single closed ecosystem.

Opening up to cooperation with BASE and connecting both worlds into a hybrid model through our own integration solution was a natural next step. Instead of tool rivalry, we chose interoperability. Today, I see this decision as a sign of maturity — both for our team and for the market as a whole.

Reorganizing Our Own Brands as Well

The changes of 2025 did not apply only to our agency operations. We took an equally critical look at our private labels. Here too, we made cuts, simplifications, and decisions with one clear goal: preparing them for further, sustainable growth.

A particularly important milestone was the rebranding of BENBOW. This was not change for the sake of change. BENBOW is growing faster than ever before. We are redefining the portfolio, strengthening our position in the detailing market, and working with an increasing number of partners. We needed an identity that could keep up with this pace and clearly reflect modernity, technology, and growth momentum. The new BENBOW is the result of that journey — not its starting point.

2025 also marked a key breakthrough in the global positioning of our private labels. We entered into a long-term, strategic partnership with NIGHTRIDE, an icon of automotive lifestyle with a highly engaged community of over one million followers. This cooperation significantly expands the scale of our reach and opens access to a broader and more diverse audience across demanding markets such as the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Poland.

We see this step as an integral part of a broader strategy in which branding, product quality, and efficient distribution must form a coherent whole. For us, this goes beyond promotional activity — it is a deliberate test of scalable international cooperation models that increasingly define the direction of modern e-commerce. The insights gained from this and many other experiences directly translate into the value we deliver to our agency clients.

Close to the Source: Sourcing and Production

2025 was also a return to fundamentals. Trips to China and direct meetings with manufacturers reminded us how important it is to stay close to the source. We have been importing from Taiwan and China for over 15 years, manufacturing in Poland, selling through our German sales entity, and operating as a Polish-German agency that connects all of these areas into one coherent structure.

Sourcing is not an add-on for us. It is a core competency — both for our own brands and as a service for agency clients who seek stability, quality, and predictability rather than one-off opportunities.

E-Commerce Where It Actually Happens

One of the most symbolic moments of 2025 for me was the first Kaufland Global Marketplace × Setup.pl Connect meetup, which we hosted in our fulfillment warehouse. We wanted to show that the best conversations about e-commerce happen where it actually takes place — among processes, logistics, and everyday operational challenges.

This event confirmed that education and networking do not need to be detached from practice. That is why we will continue this format in 2026, creating spaces for discussion in places where “real e-commerce” happens.

Team and Development as a Continuous Process

2025 was also a year of team growth — not only in headcount, but above all in competencies. It has become increasingly clear that in a field as dynamic as e-commerce, development cannot end with onboarding.

Looking ahead to 2026, we want to place even greater emphasis on self-development and participation in conferences, events, and training — not only those organized by us. Knowledge acquisition and transfer should not be treated as a benefit or an add-on, but as a natural part of daily work and organizational culture.

A Broader Perspective: Knowledge, Experience, Distance

One of the greatest values of 2025 for us was operating within multiple networks simultaneously — both European and non-European. Working with clients from the United States, where e-commerce is simply further advanced in many areas, provides valuable perspective and allows us to adapt solutions before they become standard in Europe.

This combination of markets, experiences, and observations means that we do not build strategies in isolation. We build them on real tests, conversations, and conclusions — often also on mistakes made earlier by others.

At this point, I would also like to congratulate Patrycja Sass-Staniszewska, President of the Polish Chamber of Digital Economy (e-Izba), on an important milestone in the long-standing fight for fairer cross-border trade. As the leader of Poland’s most important industry organization, she has for years pursued this goal with unwavering determination, advocating equal opportunities for domestic companies operating both locally and internationally, increasingly pressured by the mass inflow of shipments from China into Europe.

The abolition of the €150 de minimis threshold from 2026 is a direct result of her appeals and years of groundwork carried out together with the e-Izba team and working groups. These efforts are genuinely changing the rules of the game for European entrepreneurs. I am very glad that we could cooperate in this process also in my role as a member of the e-Izba Council, supporting these and other key initiatives. I wholeheartedly recommend membership in this exceptional community to all companies that want to have a real influence on how the market evolves, and I encourage readers to explore the many reports and initiatives planned by e-Izba for 2026.

Looking Ahead to 2026

As we enter 2026, I do not feel the need to announce a revolution. The e-commerce market is currently in a phase of continuous evolution rather than sudden disruption. I could write at length about AI, LLMs, or marketplaces appearing and disappearing, but experience has taught me one thing: the only constant is change — and all signs suggest that 2026 will move even faster than 2025.

In such a reality, the ability to distinguish lasting trends from temporary ones becomes crucial. Networking and access to a broad range of knowledge sources within the international environment we operate in play a key role here. One of the places where we continuously collect and structure this knowledge is ecommercenews.pl.

That is why, for the coming year, I see a consistent continuation of our chosen path: more automation where repetition drains human energy, more system integration instead of system rivalry, and more decisions based on experience and hard data — and fewer based on assumptions.

And above all, more resilience. Operational, technological, and mental.

Closing Thoughts

I would also like to thank everyone without whom this year would not have been possible. Our team — for commitment, responsibility, and readiness to adapt when reality demanded it. Our partners and co-founders — for trust, openness to dialogue, and joint decision-making, even when choices were not easy. And finally, our families — for patience, support, and understanding during times when work intensity made balance difficult to maintain.

I wish you all calm, warm Christmas holidays — a time for reflection, conversations that do not have to lead to decisions, and moments spent with loved ones, away from daily pressure and performance metrics.

May this holiday season be an opportunity to pause and look back on the past year with perspective — both on what succeeded and what proved challenging.

And in the coming New Year, I wish you courage to make conscious decisions, calm in times of volatility, and consistency in pursuing your chosen direction. May 2026 be a year of stability where it is needed, and growth where there is room for it.

Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year.

Anna Konopa
CEO Setup.pl