The acquisition of Mango Home Shopping TV from TVN, a US-Polish network, is designed to make Poland one of the biggest markets for Studio Moderna, the company's founder and director, Sandi Češko, told the newspaper.

Headquartered in the Netherlands, Studio Moderna used to rely on Russia and Ukraine for the bulk of its revenue, but sales there have been hurt by political tensions and poor business decisions that led to a 10% group sales drop in 2014.

"Just before the crisis we decided to outsource our warehouse and packaging, but the contractor was not up to the job. After six months of crisis we took over the warehouse and today it is one of the best Russian direct sales logistics centres," Češko said.

"We've just recently signed an agreement with Alibaba and a series of major Russian online firms. We have turned crisis into good business," he said.

Češko said the crisis was now over and the company was on track to posting double-digit sales growth and reach end-year sales to the tune of EUR 500m.

"We've been replacing the Russian market, which used to be twice the size in terms of revenue, with other markets. Next year we are entering the German market," he said.