E-Motive partners with companies to scale and grow clients across the world on various marketplaces offering store design, translated listings and multi lingual customer services in all categories of selling. Their specialised Automotive Parts & Accessories Team currently work with brands such as the RAC, Aston Martin and Vauxhall and also aftermarket parts companies such as Hella, Unipart and Febi Bilstein.
As specialists, the team works with marketplace catalogues helping sellers index their items and help to avoid issues around the marketplace duplication policy. You can drop them a line for further information on how to sell more on [email protected] and this week they are writing three guest posts, the first of which is published today:
1. Introduction, eBay, Change or Risk Being Restricted.
2. Amazon, Changes for the Better But Not Without Some Pain.
3. The Cross Border Trade Opportunity on Marketplaces for Parts & Accessories.
Selling Car Parts & Accessories Cross Border Trade
As both Amazon and eBay will tell you, the big opportunity is not to just sell in your home country but out of it. There are obvious challenges around this, including the 23 main different languages spoken in Europe alone, different currencies, taxation rules and logistics etc. BUT the opportunity in Europe combined is twice the size of the prize in North America so can you afford to ignore it?
Parts & Accessories need the same love and attention to sell out of the UK as it requires in selling in your home country, but there are some differences that you need to be aware of;
eBay
Selling categories are not always the same, so you need to make sure this is researched prior to pushing listings live. This also means that the item specifics will not be the same as the UK; some details are compulsory but others are optional. But, just like listing on the UK site, the more you match the best chance you have for being pushed up the search results on best match.
The biggest difference is related to the catalogue, the Master Vehicle List is only live in the UK and Germany, which means that you have to list the old way in other countries. Unfortunately this means writing many listings with the vehicle details in the title of the listing, inserting the make and model details into the item specifics of the listing.
Outside the UK the main sites for P & A is Germany, but the opportunity is on the French, Spanish and Italian sites where there is a lack of inventory for buyers to select. The successful sellers are listing in the local language actively on the site, ensuring that everything is translated from the item title, item specifics and description.
Amazon
In Europe, Amazon currently have sites in the UK, Germany, Spain, France and Italy. As described previously, a lot has changed for P & A in the last year on Amazon and the same advancement has occurred on the other country sites at the same time as the UK. It is however easier to list without the investment of translation if the item has previously been listed on Amazon or if it is an item which is indexed to Tecdoc.
The best way to check is by inputting the EAN or part number onto Amazon to see if the listing appears. The buyer can then find the part either by selecting their vehicle or where available, input their license number. Amazon now allows you to register for a unified European account from your UK account allowing multi-level listings with different prices in different EU countries. With all that said, the opportunity is to be first to market with a part which is not already listed on Amazon. Like eBay, this means that you have to create the listing which will require an investment in translation.
