OnBuy have announced record growth figures. Just four years after the company’s launch, the end of this fiscal year revealed a GMV record growth of 24,000%.
OnBuy also announced 600% revenue growth in 2020 for the second consecutive year – despite a worldwide slowdown in economic growth – which follows a 500% increase from 2017 to 2018. To accommodate this exponential growth, OnBuy has tripled its workforce to over 50 full-time staff.
Behind the record growth hype – the real numbers
I hear you about to say “Yes, but it’s easy to grow from not a lot to a bit more!” and that’s true… so let’s look at the real numbers and how OnBuy stack up against more established competitors.
We’ve been tracking OnBuy for the past year (along with the other top UK marketplaces) using external sources and have seen OnBuy’s traffic grow from a respectable but small 681 thousand visits in August 2019 to 3.206 million visits in July 2020 – That’s phenomenal growth which has seen OnBuy grow from a hopeful startup to be currently sitting between the highly respected but much longer established Fruugo and Notonthehighstreet in terms of traffic ranking.
Onbuy revealed further internal numbers today including a current run rate of £120m in sales:
- Over 8 million customers
- More than 25 million products
- Over 4 million monthly visitors
- 400 new retailers every month
- Tripled staff to over 50 full-time employees
OnBuy are forecasting that the strong growth will continue with their next goal targeting £2bn in sales by 2024. They are set enter Q4 with a strong marketing strategy and preparing for the first phase of their global launch into over 140 countries. We’re also expecting them to announce in the near future an aggressive marketing ramp up across multiple channels and a range of promotions to drive customer awareness and engagement.
“These incredible growth figures are evidence that the market desperately needed a marketplace like OnBuy that, through creating an ecommerce ecosystem that benefits online retailers and customers equally, can provide a sustainable long-term solution to selling and shopping online.
We’ve evidently found the right formula for success: we’re already running at £120m in sales and we haven’t even launched globally yet. Ahead of our phased launch into over 140 countries, where we’ll have the widest reach of any online marketplace, we’re investing heavily in the UK site with a massive Q4 planned. We expect to 5x our millions-strong audience this year, which will further accelerate our 24,000% growth. We’re projecting a turnover of £2 billion in sales by 2024, and we’re set to claim 3-5% of the £84bn UK ecommerce market in the next three years.”
– Cas Paton, founder and CEO, OnBuy
4 Responses
…Pity the extensions they provide are a nightmare cost us 1 whole website and a load of waffle in return. Do not trust the provider they use.
Blessing is disguise however got me off my backside have a new site nearly ready to go live and synced with eBay properly no fanny about (took 5 minutes) .
OnBuy are splattering stock all over the web a lot better than eBay are for example. We will use them for a few manuel listing only however because of this.
Their fees combined with PayPal are actually more expensive than eBay in our sector and so many of the products are (in our sector are pricey)….
Looks like the site is already getting full of the arbitrage sellers, easy to spot with the random price amounts and some with ridiculous postage prices £15 for set of 4 coasters. I can express ship parcels to most of Europe for less than that.
@ onbuy,
what is your policy regarding arbitrage sellers that Rob has spotted and mentioned in his post above?