Due to the Covid 19 pandemic and the fact that most of the physical stores were closed for the major part of the year 2020 – e-commerce industry experienced a significant growth and it’s still rapidly increasing.
While in 2020 retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 4.28 trillion US dollars, predictions are that e-retail revenues will grow to 5.4 trillion US dollars in 2022.
Although Amazon USA is still a great place to sell your product with access to a huge shopper base, the competition there is too high and the rules are much stricter than in other marketplaces.
There are a few emerging marketplaces that are growing rapidly which are bringing a lot of opportunities for expanding your business.
Let us introduce you to emerging Amazon International Markets and other marketplaces worth checking out:
Amazon Poland
Starting March 2nd 2021, Polish customers can shop through Amazon.Pl. It is it the number one trending marketplace in Europe right now.
E-commerce benefited a lot from Covid 19 and Poland was no exception. The value of e-commerce sales in Poland grew by 25.6 percent in 2020, to 76.8 billion złoty (16.92 billion euros), which is a growth rate much bigger than the global level where it was around 16 percent.
It is expected for Poland to be the next big thing.
Allegro
Polish e-commerce giant Allegro ranks 13th amongst the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world, with 220 million monthly visits. It reached a boom in online sales during the coronavirus pandemic.
Allegro currently holds around 33% of the Polish e-commerce market share. Considering the fact Amazon joined the market, Allegro has recently introduced loyalty programs, free delivery, same-day delivery and a deferred-payment option for buyers.
Its local market knowledge will definitely challenge Amazon’s market share, especially if Amazon repeats the mistakes it made entering Sweden, in October 2020.
Some of the missteps, translation errors and different glitches(such as using Argentinian flag instead of Swedish one) among them, contributed to the company’s bad reception in the market.
Amazon Netherlands
Although Amazon.nl exists since 2014, only as of March 2020 its customers have had the approach to all sorts of goods: from home stuff to electronic products. The launch of the marketplace was not so successful – for the first few months Amazon hasn’t rolled out PPC for the Dutch market and people were used to buying from Amazon.de which is a German marketplace. It resulted in really bad sales – some sellers were getting only 20-30 sales per month.
However, since December 2020, they introduced PPC and people started to get great results. Amazon doubled its revenue in just 4 months since this happened and this market still has a great potential to grow.
Retail expert Dirk Mulder of ING predicts that Amazon will gain further share and beat its competitors such as bol.com, Coolblue or MediaMarkt since it charges significantly lower prices (up to 18%).
Amazon UAE
Amazon.ae had its debut in 2019. Although it is already an established market, certain categories still have place to grow, one of them being home deco – most of the rentals in Dubai, for instance, come unfurnished, so there is a huge demand for it. Still, everything in this market is rather expensive, so there is space for new merchants who would offer better bargain.
The advantage of this category is that you can basically offer all your listings in English since you are targeting expats who are not Arabic-speaking.
Amazon Japan
Considering the fact that only United States, Germany and UK had higher Amazon sales in 2020 than Japan, this marketplace is definitely not something that should be ignored.
It did not change significantly in the past two years. Very important thing for the Japanese market is to do your keywords in both traditional Japanese characters and Romaji( a way to write Japanese words phonetically using Roman symbols, i.e. the English alphabet). It is something that can’t be neglected.
PPC is still very cheap and if you have the right product, don’t be afraid to hit that market!
Rakuten
Another big player in the Japanese e-commerce universe is Rakuten. Having 49000 stores and a quarter of Japanese e-commerce market share, it’s certainly worth considering selling there.
Rakuten it adapted to the taste of Japanese customers – it gives them a stylish experience of a shopping mall. The platform gives brands much more freedom than Amazon in respect of how they wish to portray themselves to their audiences. It is a great online selling location for brands that know how to distinguish themselves from competitors.
However, establishing your online store on Rakuten might be slightly more complicated than Amazon because you need to have a local bank account (registering your business there) or a local partner.
For the businesses who are willing to invest, this marketplace can be highly lucrative.
Other interesting marketplaces to consider
Zalando
Zalando SE is a German e-commerce company based in Berlin, Germany. It offers mostly fashion and lifestyle products to customers in 17 European markets.
However, it will expand its presence into eight new European markets in 2021 and 2022, as they said. This year, it will expand to Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia, while it will enter Hungary and Romania in 2022.
Currently it has around 30 million active users. According to the survey done by Direct Link, Zalando on average has a larger presence in the surveyed countries than Amazon.
Also, listing on Zalando is far simpler than on Amazon. If you want to expand to the European market, surely do consider this platform.
Cdicsount
Cdiscount is a French marketplace with 20 million unique visitors every month. It sells a number of products itself as a retailer and it’s also a marketplace where more than 12,000 sellers offer their products.
Cdiscount has opened its marketplace to more than 200 million European consumers in Belgium, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg and Italy.
It is a very important player in the European market.
Start Selling Internationally Today
As you can see, there are a lot of very interesting marketplaces which are not saturated and where you can expand your business. Seems overwhelming? Don’t worry – we are here for guidance.
Whether you need help with listing translation or optimization, our team is here to help you you.
We operate in all Amazon marketplaces including Japan. Real people are taking care of your listings and making sure everything runs smoothly.
If you need our assistance, we are at your disposal.