October 10, 2023

Alternatives to Amazon to develop your e-commerce sales

Most sellers or brands who decide to sell on a marketplace choose AMAZON !

Is it a good choice? Not necessarily…

Amazon is indeed the site that dominates the French ranking with more than 36 million unique visitors x month! However, Amazon only generates 20% of the e-commerce turnover in France… It is without a doubt the marketplace where competition is the strongest with, in particular, a large number of Chinese sellers capable of cutting prices or very quickly creating products competing with yours in order to capture your market!

A brand or distributor can choose other sales channels other than to Amazon !

B TO C MARKETPLACES AND IN PARTICULAR SPECIALIZED MARKETPLACES

Let’s take some examples with products in various universes:

DIY, which you will be able to sell on :

Specialized marketplaces such as ManoMano, Leroy Merlin, Bricoprivé, Distriartisan, Castorama, Conforama, Bricorama, BUT…
General marketplaces like Amazon, Cdiscount, Ebay, Leboncoin, Rakuten, Auchan, Carrefour, Leclerc…

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Home Universe, which you will be able to sell on:

Specialized marketplaces such as La Redoute, Maison du Monde, But, Conforama, Camif, Galeries Lafayette …
General marketplaces like Amazon, Cdiscount, Ebay, Leboncoin…

Fashion, which you will be able to sell on :

Specialized marketplaces such as Zalando, La Redoute, Asos, Galeries Lafayette, Kiabi, Spartoo, Vinted …
General marketplaces like Amazon, Cdiscount, Ebay, Carrefour, Leclerc…

B TO B PLATFORMS (BRAND RETAIL PLATFORMS, B TO B MARKETPLACES)

You will also be able to develop B2B sales via :

Brand Retail Platforms: Ankorstore, Faire, Orderchamp …
B to B versions of marketplaces: Amazon, Cdiscount, ManoMano …

We see that depending on the products you have to sell, other marketplaces may be relevant. Moreover, for a large number of them, they are marketplaces created by large specialty retail chains (GDS). They are clearly identified by French consumers. Most of them are highly trusted and have become “reflexes” whenever a French person wants to make a purchase.

Here are some examples of marketplaces created by major GDS brands (Leroy Merlin, Décathlon, Maison du Monde, Fnac, Darty, Boulanger, Nature&Découvertes, Galeries Lafayette, Cultura, Kiabi, Conforama, Castorama,Bricorama, Carrefour, Leclerc, Auchan, etc.).

COMPETITION ON THESE ALTERNATIVE SALES CHANNELS

Competition on these alternative sales channels is different from that on Amazon:

Less competition : On Amazon you have tens of thousands of competitors. On other marketplaces, the marketplace’s turnover is lower. However, you have up to 100 times fewer competitors!

Few or no Chinese, or much less : On Amazon.fr, 50% of your sellers are Chinese, who are able to sell products similar to yours. The same products with very low prices and purchase prices for products that you will never have ! Access to other marketplaces is more complex for Chinese (lack of knowledge of specialized marketplaces, «non-automated» account opening, selection of marketplace sellers…)

Opportunity to arrive at an early stage of the marketplace’s development. This makes it easier to enter and benefit from a period of lower competition.

On the other hand, these alternative sales channels to Amazon are most of the time much more restrictive in the choice of sellers !

These restrictions may relate to many points:

Products that do not in compete with those of the marketplace brands: the products offered must complement the products offering of the brand that created the marketplace and not compete with them or risk taking sales from their own products. For example La Redoute with La Redoute Intérieurs or AM/PM would refuse the request of bed linen brand that would compete with its products regardless of the quality of the brand and its products)

Size of your catalog: Let’s take ManoMano as an illustrative example. It can decide at a given moment not to accept new sellers who do not have more than 100 products. This allows it to limit the onboarding of sellers who will not quickly achieve sufficient turnover according to its internal criteria.

Product categories: The marketplace may consider that it is not strategic to integrate new sellers into a category because there are enough sellers or they want to focus their efforts onboarding new sellers on other product categories. For example, Conforama may reject products from the pet furniture universe at a given time when the category is not at the center of their development effort when they analyze product searches and sales.

Among our clients, we see the most dynamic ones developing multi-channel sales strategies. Their solutions include opening stores on specialized marketplaces or developing brand websites. They launch their new brands through BrandRetail platforms to recruit independent distributors and build a retail distribution network , or to be identified by major mass-market retailers.