Year in review — 2024
merch.am 2024 annual review: EcoVadis Gold-tier certification, expansion to UAE and Cyprus, top wins, lessons learned, and key partnerships.
Headline metrics
| Metric | 2023 | 2024 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active B2B clients | 118 | 164 | +39% |
| Annual orders | 2,640 | 3,580 | +36% |
| Recipients reached | 720K | 980K | +36% |
| Countries with operations | 4 | 6 | +2 (CY, AE) |
| Languages served | 5 | 8 | +3 (ar, sr, el) |
| EcoVadis tier | Silver | Gold | +1 tier |
| Senior staff retention | 91% | 94% | +3pp |
| Recipient NPS (where measured) | 54 | 62 | +8 |
Top 5 wins
- EcoVadis Gold-tier recertification — moved from Silver to Gold (top 5% globally) at the November reassessment, with documented improvements in environment, ethics, and supply-chain pillars.
- UAE office launch — Dubai office opened in March; first GCC tender won in May; full P&L positive by Q3.
- Cyprus EU intra-bloc lane — Limassol office launched in June, providing EU intra-bloc fulfillment for the first time. By year-end, 22% of EU-bound orders shipped via Cyprus.
- Workday integration practice — won 5 new Workday-integrated enterprise clients; HRIS-triggered welcome kits became 30% of recurring revenue.
- Two-way landed-cost transparency — rolled out the DDP-with-breakdown pricing standard across all client contracts; eliminated 90% of post-shipment pricing disputes.
Top 3 lessons
- UAE expansion took 4 months longer than planned — local hiring market for senior procurement-experienced staff was thinner than our model assumed. Mitigation: opened a 6-month relocation track for senior hires from other offices.
- Multi-currency treasury complexity scaled non-linearly — 4 currencies became 6, FX hedging policy needed full rewrite. We brought in a fractional treasury advisor and rolled out monthly reporting on FX exposure.
- Sustainability documentation became a hard tender requirement faster than expected — by Q4, 52% of mid-enterprise tenders required Silver+ as a gating condition. Suppliers without current EcoVadis certs were filtered out at first-round screening.
Sustainability progress
- EcoVadis Gold (was Silver) — top 5% globally
- 72% of catalog items now offered with certified-sustainable variant (was 54%)
- Scope 1+2 emissions reduced 18% per unit (denominator: order line)
- Plastic-free packaging adoption: 31% of orders (was 12%)
- Take-back pilot launched in Cyprus (returns end-of-life merch for material recovery)
- Sedex SMETA 4-pillar audit completed at all 4 production hubs
Regional expansion timeline
- Q1 2024 — UAE office incorporation, hiring, premises
- Q2 2024 — UAE go-live, Cyprus office launch
- Q3 2024 — first wins in both new regions
- Q4 2024 — Greek (el) locale rollout in Cyprus; Arabic (ar) localization across UAE
Key partnerships established or deepened
- SAP Ariba — moved to Premier Partner tier
- EcoVadis — Gold-tier recertification
- DHL Express — strategic partner agreement signed
- Aramex — Gulf last-mile partnership signed
- Big-4 tax firm partnership renewed across 6 countries
Looking to 2025
Three priorities for 2025: (1) Platinum recertification, (2) Serbia office launch, (3) AIEO content infrastructure rollout. Read the 2025 review for what actually happened.