Greg Zemor is founder of Neteven, a marketplace management application which enables you to sell on eBay, Amazon, PriceMinister, Fnac, Pixmania, Rue du Commerce, La Redoute, Cdiscount, Brand Alley, Atosho and OneWorldAvenue in France and in Europe. As well as French and EU marketplace Neteven can of course be used to manage retailing on UK marketplaces. Today Greg looks at the best marketplaces you should be selling on in France.
Distribute your Media and Consumer Electronics catalogue on leading French Marketplaces
The French marketplace landscape is very country-specific. eBay and Amazon rule the roost in the UK, but in France there are 8 marketplaces that rank amongst the Top 15 ecommerce sites. This means that distributing on eBay and Amazon alone is simply not enough to cover the French market.
While it is true that Amazon is the most viewed website in France with 14 million unique visitors each month*, surprisingly, eBay is not in second place, even with a whopping 10 million. Between these two giants, you will find 2 key players: Cdiscount (11 million unique monthly visitors) and Fnac (10.5 million unique monthly visitors). Right behind these big four is PriceMinister with 7.5 million unique visitors. As a UK merchant, distributing on all of these marketplaces is key to launching a successful cross border trade project.
Neteven provides us with an interesting analysis of these marketplaces and the reason why any UK merchant serious about cross border trade should work with them:
PRICEMINISTER
Purchased by Rakuten Group in 2011, which also owns Play.com, PriceMinister is the main competitor of eBay in France and a fellow pure player. PriceMinister is as generalist as eBay and allows SMBs and large merchants to sell any type of goods in any category. PriceMinister has a very strong audience in Media and Consumer Electronics but is experiencing strength growth in demand for Apparel too.
FNAC
Fnac is an historical offline retailer in France and is part of the PPR Group. Since opening in 2009, Fnac Marketplace has become a strong competitor to Amazon. Media and Consumer Electronics were the only available categories at the time of launch and still represent most of Fnac Marketplace’s GMV. However, Fnac now allows merchants to list other types of goods such as Musical Instruments, Office Supply, Baby Care and more.
CDISCOUNT
Cdiscount is part of the Casino distribution group. The ecommerce site was launched in 2000 and has fast become the leading French website in discounted goods. The marketplace opened in 2010 and allows merchants to list Media and Consumer Electronics items at both full and discounted prices.
Neteven opportunities in France
These marketplaces represent massive opportunities for UK merchants, but each has specific ways of working with merchants and integration options are completely different from one to another. Before launching, it is important to have properly understood their audience, their product structure, their order management system and their expectations and methods of customer communication.
Properly managed, these marketplaces will represent a significant part of your online business, and Neteven can accompany you in this process from start to finish.
* source Médiamétrie/NetRatings, November 2012.
