Meet the marketplace: Cdiscount Marketplace

No primary category set

It’s a new year and a new decade, an ideal time to consider expanding to new marketplace and territories so in our first marketplace interview of 2020, we spoke to Jonathan Gorges from the Cdiscount Marketplace to discover more about the opportunity on offer. Created in 1998 in Bordeaux, Cdiscount has grown tremendously to become the French ecommerce leader, with 20 million unique visitors every month. For sellers this is a unique opportunity to enter the French market where online buyers are more and more numerous.

Jonathan Gorges, Marketplace director, Cdiscount Marketplace“We gather in our platform as many attractive products and services as possible and ensure a high quality of customer service based on our fully integrated logistics network. We propose a wide range of products including, among others, high-tech, IT, household appliances, personal appliances and cultural goods.”
– Jonathan Gorges, Marketplace director, Cdiscount Marketplace

Who are Cdiscount?

Cdiscount sells an array of products itself as a retailer and hosts a marketplace where more than 12,000 sellers offer millions of products. The site offers the option of fast and flexible home delivery or collection at one of its thousands pick-up points throughout France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Italy. Cdiscount loyalty program “Cdiscount à Volonté” (ie. Cdiscount on demand) is very efficient, almost one third of the orders are made by customers holding the Cdiscount à Volonté membership.

To sell on our Marketplace you only need to be a registered professional company. There is a monthly fee (€39.99 excl. VAT) plus commissions on sales with fees varying by category. Dedicated onboarding support is available to start selling on Cdiscount.

Cdiscount also hosts a B2B Marketplace.

We have some unique features which set our proposition apart:

  1. Our website is vibrant and constantly updated in order to highlight to our customers new hot deals and promotions in all our categories. Visitors find new hot deals and promotions every single day on our website
  2. Our prices are very attractive vs. our competitors which explains why our organic traffic is so significant with 20 million unique visitors per month (Mediametrie).
  3. On top of products, customers will also gain access to many services such as Travels Mobile services, Energy services (electricity or gas), Concert tickets, Health services, Insurance
  4. Our very simple 4-instalment payment feature also impacts our conversion rate

We have a wide range of partners in UK to support you including integrators (Linnworks, ChannelAdvisor, Selro, Volo, Veeqo, SellerDynamics…), payment solutions (Worldfirst, SimplyVAT) and web agencies (We Are Pentagon).

What type of products sell well on Cdiscount Marketplace?

  • Bedding
  • Clothing – Lingerie – Sport
  • Computing
  • Decoration – DIY – Tools
  • Electronics
  • Furnishing unit – Garden
  • Home appliances
  • Hygiene – Beauty
  • TV – Video – Audio
  • Video games
  • Wine – Spirits – Liquids

Cdiscount offers New, Used and Refurbished products.

How to register as a Cdiscount Marketplace seller

Our Registration form is available here

A couple of documents are needed to register :

  • A piece of ID
  • Your company information and
  • Your banking information

In minutes, your Registration Form will be sent to our team. We will contact you as soon as possible to confirm your registration.

All new merchants get support by email or phone from our teams to ensure a smooth onboarding. Our support team (available during usual local working hours) is also available to answer all kinds of questions and we have several webinars available for both new and experienced merchants.

There are multiple options available to add products to the Cdiscount Marketplace:

  • CSV or Excel
  • Bulk Uploads
  • API Integration
  • Via System Integrators

Monthly subscriptions are deducted from what you earn through sales on the site, and are payable from the first day of each month. The monthly fee is €39.99 exc. VAT.

  • No commitment,
  • Unlimited number of products in your catalogue,
  • Open setting of shipping costs and methods,
  • Connections with the most important market flow integrators

Coming from Tamebay, you benefit from a free 6 first months!

Applicable commission rates can be seen at here

We also have currency specialist partners to help you with payment transfers.

Cdiscount Fulfilment

We offer logistic services such as product storage, delivery management and logistics for after-sales management including returns.
By entrusting your products to a fulfilment specialist, you will rationalise your logistic with only one partner to handle your storage and dispatches, whether you’re selling in France or Europe, on Cdiscount or on other marketplaces. You will increase your profitability by focusing on your core business and sourcing new top selling products.

By using our logistical expertise will benefit from:

  • Ensuring an inventory tracking service
  • Enhance your service quality by reducing your claims and delivery issues
  • Increase your profitability by accessing one of the best price schedules on the market
  • Gain visibility on the marketplace by reducing your delivery time and increasing your conversion rate
  • A single stock to manage your orders from Cdiscount or any other channel for more than 20 European countries

Our service allows you to use our logistics to fulfil all your orders. We currently handle any type of products regardless of their size or weight even for large products such as furniture, bedding or household appliances. Our warehouses throughout France ensures a next day delivery at the customer address or in any pickup point available – one of the delivery options most chosen by the French population. Your products being delivered quicker with all the delivery modes available for your customers will inherently increase their satisfaction and thus, your sales. On average, sellers experience a 35% increase in their sales when using Cdiscount Fulfilment service. Last but not least, you will get a logistics account manager who will help you get through all the different steps of the process and support you in the different issues you may encounter.

Your offers will benefit from the mention « Shipped by Cdiscount ». Moreover, they are also eligible for our loyalty customers Cdiscount à Volonté (Cdiscount on demand) which offers subscribers express delivery at home, free and unlimited for customers. Your offers will benefit from increased visibility on the site, with express shipment by us and free for your customers!

Our Cdiscount Express Seller Program

Because we know some merchants are experts in logistics, we also grant access to be part of our Cdiscount à Volonté loyalty program if they can ship their orders in 48 hours. Cdiscount Express Seller allows you to have your catalogue offered to “Cdiscount à Volonté” subscribers, the Cdiscount loyalty program. This program includes free delivery all year round the next day and to consumers’ homes. This entitles you to show the loyalty program logo on their product sheet and thus gain more visibility. The program attracts a community of 2 million subscribers, and 1 out of 3 orders is placed by a subscriber.

Tell us about international selling?

Cdiscount has opened its Marketplace to more than 200 million European consumers in Belgium, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg and Italy. By ticking the “International Delivery” box and selecting the countries you wish to sell in, your entire catalogue becomes visible to these international consumers. This international shipping option is simple and free!

And you recently launched the International Marketplace Network, can you share more about this?

In 2019, we launched the International Marketplace Network (IMN): a pan-European marketplace platform in partnership with three leading marketplaces. The European marketplace alliance includes Cdiscount (France), real.de (Germany), eMAG (Romania) and ePrice (Italy).
The platform is the first fully integrated European marketplace of its kind, which enable merchants to use a single point to sync their products and sell in real-time, granting sellers access to more than “230 million potential customers.”

More info : https://imnnow.com/en/home.html

How to get started selling on the Cdiscount Marketplace

– Visit our website
– Contact us: [email protected]

Come meet Cdiscount team at UK ecommerce events in 2020

Our staff will be present in several events this year :

And more to come… We’ll be glad to talk to you!

7 Responses

  1. Am I the only one ? The link to commission rates (believed to be 18% for small businesses – no it’s not a typo, you did read 18) doesn’t work.

  2. Thanks Gav. Now works indeed.
    I have been trying to start selling there, sort of “let’s see what happens”.
    What happened was an 18% fee instead of, according to this link, 7%. I have just been to live chat who says oh yes, there was a glitch spotted a fortnight ago; Email your account manager.
    I write to this lady called Bond. Allowed to kill I guess, but that’s normal behavior for a marketplace. I immediately get an “out of office” would you believe it: “for an indefinite period of time” it says; In case of emergency contact … live chat…

  3. Update

    If Mr Gorges could comment, it would be nice.

    Categories are a little different on eBay but on average we are talking here about two times more fees. Ok these include financial costs, but I wouldn’t mind using other methods to get paid. (Cdiscount pays every 10 days only, when people like Stripe are now going to be sale + 3 days).

    The site does not seem small-business friendly.
    Mastering Excel is recommended. As Customer Service told me, listing items individually is ” unstable “. An understatement …

  4. Cdiscount is a very difficult marketplace to work with. Their support do not understand the problem and it is always difficult to get a response to the question asked. They artificially allow claims rate and other metrics to exceed the allowed threshold and easily accounts are suspended. In fact very often they don’t maintain metrics correctly and accuse sellers of wrongdoing though it is all their internal mistake. Without any explanation they place unnecessary restriction on sellers and force them to use their fulfillment service with an objective of increasing their income from sellers. Too often they block payments citing various reasons. They are very poor technically as well, product integration and shipment management tools have serious limitations. Overall the process they have adopted is a design for 3rd party seller’s failure. Though they seem to offer good support unlike Amazon, in reality they are short cited people and do not understand small business. Stay away for your own good!

  5. When challenged on a forum or social place, “contact our teams” is one of the worst possible attitudes. Everybody today understands what it really means.

    Maybe I can suggest a reply to my questions:
    ” We own a large share of our home market , and sell on our place , we will bring ourselves to accepting 3rd party sellers but only those who are prepared to pay this level of fees.
    We have no plans to fix the glitches when listing items one by one. What you can do is try to determine by trial and error, what are the days and hours when the livechat might be relatively not to difficult to get in touch with, and try listing at such moments, so that when your work gets lost you can immediately try to speak to someone who will try to recover the listing. If you are able to prepare in advance a number of listings, listings which we find interesting, and do this using our spreadsheet, we will be happy to name an assistant who will work on their publication. “

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