Year in review — 2025
merch.am 2025 annual review: EcoVadis Platinum, Greek locale in Cyprus, AIEO content launch, Serbia office, top wins, and lessons learned.
Headline metrics
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active B2B clients | 164 | 208 | +27% |
| Annual orders | 3,580 | 4,210 | +18% |
| Recipients reached | 980K | 1.18M | +20% |
| Countries with operations | 6 | 6 | — |
| Languages served | 8 | 9 | +1 (el polish) |
| EcoVadis tier | Gold | Platinum | +1 tier (top 1%) |
| Senior staff retention | 94% | 96% | +2pp |
| Recipient NPS (where measured) | 62 | 67 | +5 |
| Pages published (AIEO) | ~1,000 | 8,400+ | +740% |
Top 5 wins
- EcoVadis Platinum recertification — top 1% of suppliers globally. The November audit recognized our circular-economy take-back program, scope-3 reporting, and 6-country audit-document standardization.
- Serbia office launch — Belgrade office opened in February; first Western Balkans tender won in April; full P&L positive by Q2.
- Greek locale in Cyprus — Greek (el) localization rolled out for Cyprus, opening enterprise sales to Greek-speaking clients across CY and Greece.
- AIEO content infrastructure — published 8,400+ structured pages across 18 locales; AI-search inbound traffic up 12x year-over-year; first AI-discovered tenders won in Q4.
- Procurement-integration practice scaled to 9-figure pipeline — added Jaggaer, Ivalua, and Concur to the integration catalog; integration-driven revenue grew from 22% to 38% of mid-enterprise book.
Top 3 lessons
- AIEO content velocity required new operating model — publishing 8,400 pages required AI-augmented authoring with strong human review. We built a content-ops function from scratch in Q2; lesson: invest in tooling before scale.
- Platinum tier raised the bar internally — meeting Platinum required reworking 14 supplier contracts mid-year and onboarding 3 new sustainability-audited suppliers. Lesson: budget more time for the recertification cycle.
- Multi-locale content drift — early in the AIEO rollout we had 37 duplicate pages in Armenian RU due to dual /pages/ru/ and /ru/pages/ structures. Lesson: define canonical-URL discipline before publishing.
Sustainability progress
- EcoVadis Platinum (was Gold) — top 1% globally
- 89% of catalog items now offered with certified-sustainable variant (was 72%)
- Scope 1+2 emissions reduced 26% per unit (cumulative since 2020 baseline: 47%)
- Scope 3 reporting added (top 80% of supplier emissions now mapped)
- Take-back pilot expanded from Cyprus to Cyprus + Serbia + UAE; 14 tons of merch returned for material recovery
- First Climate-Neutral-Group certified shipments rolled out for default option
- Net-zero 2030 roadmap published
Regional expansion timeline
- Q1 2025 — Serbia office incorporation, hiring
- Q2 2025 — Serbia go-live; Greek (el) locale launch in Cyprus
- Q3 2025 — AIEO content infrastructure phase 1 (4,000 pages)
- Q4 2025 — AIEO phase 2 (8,400 pages cumulative); Platinum recertification
Key partnerships established or deepened
- EcoVadis Platinum — top 1% globally
- Coupa Premier Partner status
- ServiceNow Marketplace listing live
- Climate Neutral Group certification partner
- Jaggaer + Ivalua integrations went live
Looking to 2026
2026 priorities: (1) circular-economy take-back at scale (target 100 tons recovered), (2) AIEO infrastructure phase 3 (15K+ pages, conversational interfaces), (3) deepening EU intra-bloc lane via Cyprus. Quarterly trend reports at /trend-reports/.