Israel’s retail empire, Golf, scales online and offline for Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping frenzy.

This is a story of a startup of a different sort.

It’s about a startup that was acquired, and one that needed some computer muscle to enable it to scale up and down, depending on spikes in their business….

As you may know, tomorrow is a big shopping day in the U.S.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, when you’ve finished your turkey, watched your favorite NFL teams, and had a chance to be with friends and family.

Then… it’s off to the mall; or your computer.

Or maybe both.

And that’s just Friday.

You spend the weekend recovering, maybe doing more shopping, and then on Monday, it’s…. Cyber Monday.

But wait a minute.

This is not the U.S.; it’s Israel.

Black Friday? Cyber Monday?

Yes.

In Israel.

My friend, and work colleague, Eli Mansoor, who serves as Rackspace’s Country Manager in Israel, recently brought me over to meet with Dedy Schwarztberg and Livne Berebi, CEO and CTO respectively, of AdikaStyle, Israel’s premier online store, and Golf Online, the Internet-based component of Golf, one of Israel’s largest chain of retail stores.

Visiting their corporate offices in Tel Aviv, you could be anywhere in New York, L.A. or San Francisco, or for that matter, any hip and cool online ecommerce clothing retailer.

There are designers, models, coders and programmers doing what they do, and a massive warehouse where hundreds of workers are pulling stock, stuffing boxes, and shipping the coolest clothes on the planet — all for customers here in Israel.

As much as Israelis love to travel, and of course shop, it still remains a challenge to buy online from other countries.

Tomorrow, Golf starts a massive, country-wide retail and online sales promotion. There will be Israelis galore headed to the stores, up until they close before the Sabbath. Then, on Monday, as it will be in the U.S., the online onslaught begins, in search for the best deals, the coolest clothes, rapid customer service, and fast and reliable shipping.

Even with delivery services, or having friends or relatives who might bring you something from the North America or Europe, a market opportunity existed for Dedy, Livne and their team to build a local online brand, serving a highly focused and lucrative market.

Seeing the success Adika was having, the management of Golf made an offer to acquire not just the company, but the ecommerce smarts of Akida to help accelerate their own online initiatives.

Adika was acquired for ten million dollars in April of this year, and they were off to the races.

As growth accelerated and looking for a partner to scale, they turned to Eli and his team of ecommerce experts and engineers who helped architect an ecommerce solution, Magento, that runs on Rackspace infrastructure.

Initially, Golf is focused on the Golf Kids line and will ultimately bring Livne’s technical wizards and their working with Rackspace to the other thirteen brands that Golf either owns, or licenses. In Israel, they own brands like Blue Bird, Polgat, Kitan and Intima, and act as the Israel representative for Dorothy Perkins, Topshop, Miss Selfridge and others.

Starting up, scaling up, and being acquired is certainly at the heart of every entrepreneurs dream.

Keep your eyes on this retail group, and the crack team who were born at Adika and helping their parent company scale as needed.

Happy in-store and online shopping to all.