Driven by a surge of spending in the second half of the year, Czechs spent CZK 155m (€6.12bn) online in 2019, 15 percent more than in 2018. The Association for Electronic Commerce (APEK) writes that the Christmas spend was particularly strong. Its data was backed up by findings from the Czech Statistics Office, which recorded a 17 percent rise in online spending in October. “In the pre-Christmas period, customers ended up buying more than CZK 52bn worth of goods online,” APEK’s director Jan Vetyška told Novinky.cz. The most popular items were electronic goods, cosmetics and clothing but the share of groceries and drugstore items has been rising quickly.