The first Polish online book shop in Lithuania

“After a few months of running the business, we cannot say that we have made huge profits but the interest and demand is increasing, which gives us hope and faith that the business will be profitable and we will start to earn,” say Anna and Zbigniew Łukaszewicz from Kalvelių seniūnija, the originators and founders of the first and the only Polish online book shop ewka.lt. in Lithuania.

The book shop ewka.lt is an online shop which will deliver a book, computer, educational game or a toy to the customer within one or two days after an order placement and payment. An ordered item will be delivered by courier mail. “We decided that we will sell only Polish-language items,” said Zbigniew who is the manager in the family company. The director of the ewka.lt book shop is his wife Anna who does not work professionally but devotes her time to her daughters and to… ewka.lt. Anna and Zbigniew say that the name of the book shop was derived from the first syllables of the names of their daughters: Ewa and Karolina. They also unwittingly and directly contributed to the establishment of the book shop.

“Before Christmas, we wanted to give our children some gifts and because we think that the best present is a book in mother tongue, we wanted to place an order on the Internet,” say Anna and Zbigniew. “It turned out that it is not that easy and we could not achieve our goal in Lithuania,” they continue their story. They add that they finally ordered books but… in Poland.

Then we got the idea to establish an online book shop whose services could be used mainly by Polish people. According to the founders, since childhood, we should care for our mother tongue and then nobody will accuse us that we speak a simple or local language instead of Polish. They are relatively young and time is the most important for young people so they thought that the online book shop will fit the times and stand up to contemporary challenges. At the beginning, they tried to do market research at Facebook and when they found out that there is interest in this kind of activity, they decided to go ahead. They signed contracts with a few publishing houses and wholesalers of books in Poland.

In their range of products, there are not only books but also educational games, computers for children, puzzles, speaking toys, etc. Nevertheless, they saw that people in Lithuania are not used to online shopping. This fact did not discourage them because they think that life is changing and the attitude can change. They also decided that they must let people see their business and advertise and promote the online shop by for example the participation in mass events. They made their debut at a harvest festival Dozhinki in Šalčininkai. Their debut was promising and the interest exceeded their expectations because they did not expect queues to the stand with books for children.

Underpinned by popularity and interest in the town at the Šalčia River, they went to harvest festival in Pikeliškės and they were not disappointed, which made them more certain that they should expand their business, promote it, sign more contracts and find more contacts.

They established co-operation with Polish pre-schools. Now they try to make schools interested in their products. They could help schools import and buy textbooks and children literature from Poland.

„We are open to suggestions and remarks regarding the needs and taste of young readers because only through the co-operation with the customers we can become successful,” said Anna and Zbigniew who are sure that the book shop has good perspectives and the taken risk will bring profit in the future.

Zygmunt Żdanowicz

“Tygodnik Wileńszczyzny”