I just came back from Warsaw with a completely different view of what a consumer market in motion actually looks like. Modern, kind, dynamic.
The economy is serious. Poland crossed $1 trillion GDP in 2025. 3.6% growth last year. Q4 clocked 4%. — Poland has been exceptionally resilient, with only 3 very shallow downturn years in the last 30 years. And that with all crisis in the last decades plus the war next door.
The retail battlefield is wild. Rossmann has 1,300+ stores — Poles don’t say “drugstore,” they say “Rossmann.” Hebe (380+ locations, €583m revenue) is building a genuine premium beauty identity. And dm just hit 70+ stores in Poland with a “best not biggest” philosophy, as Christoph Werner would say. Europe’s #1 drugstore by global revenue, playing challenger. Having worked for L’Oréal myself, I know, the game is on.
Major food & restaurant chains enter. I had dinner with Adam Mularuk — L’Osteria’s Polish franchise partner — and his wife, CMO at Hebe. Two people building category-defining national businesses in the same city, at speed. L’Osteria (200 restaurants), I work with, wants to grow to 500. Poland is a key here.
Poland is not an emerging market. It’s an arrived market that hasn’t been priced as one yet.
The window to build brand equity here before it gets crowded is still open. Not for long.
I also met a friend Martin Drabarek, marketing agency owner and luxury cars and boats brands specialist (Delta Powerboats) – premium segment is up 9% in 2025.
Hospitality sector is on the rise (guess what, Motel One Group is there too), as from Palma, two brands caught my I, PURO Hotels (not to mix with Palma s Puro Hotel) and Barcelo Hotel Group Powiśle — a power station turned design hotel surrounded by food markets, shopping mall, and chic apartment buildings. Warsaw knows what good looks like. Turing old industry facilities into entertaining centres is happening everywhere. One L’Osteria is opposite of the old Warsaw Vodka Production Hall, now a museum and Pernod Ricard owned. It seems like many international brands successfully did enter from Beiersdorf to and still enter, but Poland and neighbouring countries grow a power to quietly create their own brands. ANSWEAR.com fashion store, impressive. LPP S.A.. CD Projekt, a globally know video game company. Allegro, Dino Polska S.A., CCC Group
Apart from the economic side, people are extremely friendly, open and outgoing. They work hard in the week, the go out even harder on the weekend. Berlin watch out. Culture is not reduced to an iconic Soviet palace of culture and science (where cats live to reduce rats). Also the concert and opera hall is the 3rd biggest in Europe and very high in quality. Concerts, bands, new things pop up everywhere.
