There’s a lot of interest in Mexico at the moment for marketplaces around the world and if you’re not already selling to Mexico it could be time to reconsider the country as a target for expansion.
Amazon first started selling physical goods in Mexico in 2015 and in March 2017 launched Prime for Mexican customers. Linio are actively recruiting EU merchants to sell to Mexico and Alibaba recently signed a deal to connect Mexican businesses with Chinese consumers.
Now it’s been revealed that Amazon are to open a 1 million sq ft warehouse near Mexico City which would triple their warehousing space in Mexico.
Whilst Mexico is still a relatively new country in ecommerce terms, Amazon does make it relatively easy for merchants around the world to sell to Mexicans. So long as you have a North American Unified account you can sell to both Canada and Mexico just as easily as you sell to the US if you make use of Amazon FBA. Ship your products to Amazon in the US and they’ll handle all the fulfilment into Mexico. In the future once the new warehouse is up and running (expected some time in 2018) you may even be able to ship stock directly to Mexico if you’re serious about growing your sales in the territory.
Linio is also an interesting site to consider, based in Mexico they also have a presence in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela. In particular Linio are interested in recruiting Fashion and Electronic retailers.
Payments are an interesting problem in Latin America, many consumers don’t have bank accounts and prefer to pay in cash. The advantage of trading through a marketplace is that they’ll handle all payments so all you have to do is ship the stock and fulfil orders (or use Amazon FBA to do this for you).
Currently only about 3% of retail commerce in Mexico takes place online (in the US it’s closer to 10%). That means there is plenty of room to grow and equally it’s under-served by retailers. If you want to get in before the competition and dominate your category now is the time to do so.
