One of the most exciting parts of Retail Without Borders is meeting marketplaces for the first time and this year was no different. We sat down with Mark Gray, Senior Manager of Partnerships and Crossborder Trade and Sarah Gunn, GM Trading of TheMarket, a brand new marketplace launching this year and backed by New Zealand’s largest retail group.
TheMarket will bring some of the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand’s largest brands to New Zealand consumers in a brand new shopping experience. In particular they’ll focus on lifestyle categories, but it will be a full marketplace covering just about every category imaginable.
As a small country, TheMarket are looking to facilitate the cross border trade experience for New Zealanders removing expensive shipping and duties from the buying experience. As a UK or European retailer, if you can get your goods to Heathrow then TheMarket will take over and handle the international leg of the journey.
Retailers that should be interested at launch are those who have established their brand and have a great brand story to tell. Beauty, Fashion, footware, accessories and homeware brands will work especially well. High street brands will do especially well, but brands with social followings enabling brand influence will fit will as TheMarket are also engaging social influences to produce strategically briefed content to introduce brands to New Zealanders.
If you would like to be selling on TheMarket at launch, you can register your interest on their website here.
