Russian marketplaces you can sell on in 2020

Marketplaces are online platforms where sellers and buyers find each other, while the latter purchase products and services without leaving the site or app.

Like any business, marketplaces have their own characteristics. The main differences are:

• Some provide a service of so-called fulfillment: when they sell and send purchases to customers themselves, you only need to get your products to their warehouse.
• Some just processes orders and accepts payments, and you send products from your warehouse yourself.
• And some send a courier to your warehouse after the purchase and then send the product to the customer.

In this post you will learn about several Russian marketplaces where you can sell your products from almost any category. The ones that I’d recommend you to start your sales with are Wildberries, Ozon, Goods and Yandex.Market.

Wildberries

The largest marketplace in Russia, which started as a fashion retailer, now unites 31 thousand brands and processes 750 thousand orders зper day, with a total attendance of 6 million. In addition to clothing, shoes, and cosmetics, Wildberries sells food, electronics, pet supplies, and more — a total of 25 categories with dozens of subsections in each.

At the beginning of 2020, Wildberries has entered the Polish market and declared to open logistic hub in Slovakia.

Terms of partnership with Wildberries:

• 120,000 m2 warehouse in the Moscow region which works 24/7.
• Large distribution centers in St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Khabarovsk, as well as centers of expertise in 18 cities of the Russian Federation with acceptance of goods, which also work 24/7.
• 6,800 pickup points.
• Payments to brands every week.
• Fixed commission of 15%.
• Brands pay separately for delivery and return of each item.

To become a Wildberries partner, you need to fill out the initial registration form and submit an application on the supplier registration portal. It is usually considered within three days, but the process can be delayed.

Ozon

Ozon is one of the oldest ecommerce website in Russia and was originally established as an online bookseller. But in 2018 it launched its own marketplace and now you can buy almost everything from food to adult products and airline tickets. The audience of Ozon is more than 20 million regular customers, more than 3 million unique daily users and more than 200 thousand orders every day.

Today, more than 70% of its range are sellers’ products. At the end of 2019, about 6,5 thousand companies actively sold their products on the marketplace, while 15,000 more were in the process of onboarding.

The brand can choose one of two models of cooperation: shipment from the marketplace warehouse or from its own warehouse.

1. Fulfilment service. You send products to the Ozon warehouse, and the order is completed, packed and delivered without you. The main disadvantage is that all orders are depersonalized, customer data is not provided, so it is impossible to interact with your customers directly.
2. You complete and package the products by yourself, then send them to the Ozon warehouse or arrange with representatives, and they are taken away from you.

Terms of partnership with Ozon:

• 24/7 technical support for partners.
• Delivery network: own parcel lockers (>8000 in March 2020) and pick-up points (>2000).
• Prices and assortment are determined by the brand.
• Commission only for paid orders — the size is different for each category.
• The marketplace takes care of delivery and communication with customers.
• Payments are made 2 times a month.
• CPM ads help promote your products.

To start working with Ozon, register as a seller on the partner landing page, fill in the details, attach copies of the necessary documents and send a request.

Goods.ru

The M.Video’s marketplace has been operating since 2017. Now it has 3000 sellers, 16 catalog sections with more than 1.6 million products and 4.5 million monthly visitors.

The most popular categories in 2019 were pet products, electronics, food, children’s products and the “beauty and care” category. The leaders in monetary terms – the “hygiene and care” category, smartphones and accessories, pet food, tires and televisions.

The commission starts at 3%, depends on the average price and margin in each category, and is paid only for the completed order.

Terms of cooperation with Goods:

• Prices and assortment are determined by the brand.
• The marketplace provides order processing, communication with customers and delivery.
• There is no own warehouse: the marketplace courier picks up the product from the brand’s warehouse up to 50 km away from Moscow, or you send the product to the Goods.ru sorting center by yourself.
• Delivery is available in 149 in cities in Russia.
• No additional promotion inside marketplace.

To start working with the marketplace, you just need to have a legal status (as an individual entrepreneur or a company) and register on the site in the section for partners. You will be assigned a personal manager who will help you in the future. An important condition is having a warehouse near Moscow, but, as practice shows, this is not necessary.

In November 2019 Goods.ru has signed an agreement of cooperation with Russian Post, so in the future, the issue of delivery may be resolved through their application.

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Marketplaces are another great way even for small brands to reach a new audience and compete with other players in their niche.  The advantages for sellers are obvious: there is no need to create and develop your own website, the promotion is primarily engaged in the marketplace itself, sellers are able to trade throughout the country and are guaranteed to receive payment for their goods.

In addition, using the marketplace might be more convenient for the customers. They are already familiar with the interface, they trust the payment system on the marketplace and can order products from different categories in one place in a few clicks. And if the marketplace has a common warehouse, then you can get them in one parcel, which is also important if the customer does not want to go several times to the pick-up point or wait for a delivery.