How many marketplaces do you sell on? There are over 355 online marketplaces in Europe alone to choose from, 60 in Germany, 30 in France, Italy has 24 and the Netherlands and Spain have 18 each.
The list is up from 220 at the last count and is still not exhaustive, smaller marketplace such as Halfords and Game are missing as are Flubit, NotOnTheHighStreet and Yumbles, and that’s just the UK.
The 335 online marketplaces are operated by 74 different companies and offer either a full range of different goods or specialize in one category, such as fashion, wine or weapons says BVOH President, Oliver Prothmann, the company who did the research.
It’s not just product verticals where marketplaces vary, there are also open and closed marketplaces. In the open version, traders can register themselves at the marketplace while with the closed type the operator decides who may or may not be included. Online marketplaces also differ significantly from one another in the type of transaction (immediate sale, auction, listing/classified ad).
It’s staggering the amount of untapped opportunity available on online retailers and the decision has to be made where to put your focus. This will depend not only on your product and fulfilment capabilities but also which countries you wish to target and where the best returns are to be made.
One thing is certain though, there is more competition from marketplaces for retailers attention than ever before and, so long as you have software in place to manage your operations, there is plenty of choices when it comes to expanding your business.
3 Responses
interesting to note how low rakuten.co.uk score on that list, id imagine the old play.com would have been a lot higher..
Unless you are a recognised brand and have your own marketing team only use marketplaces where the main source of income is sales commission. Don’t waste time with marketplaces where the main source of income is a monthly fee. Which marketplaces on this list fall into the first sales commission category? Not many. Ask yourself why those who charge monthly fees are not interested in sales generated revenue?
For those who want sales and at the same time are ebay negative what other genuine marketplace option is there other than Amazon?