You can hear about making money on Wildberries and Ozon from any iron now. The idea is simple: find or create a product and sell it all over Russia, earn millions. Indeed, marketplaces are trending now. But there is a downside to working on such platforms, especially for those who promote their brand.
Manufacturers ask logical questions:
Is it worth developing your online store in the era of marketplaces?
How not to lose brand identity among hundreds of thousands of sellers on WB?
How to compete not only on price?
How to sell again and grow a loyal customer base? And others.
Let's compare placing products on WB with trading through your own online store, and the answers to these questions will come by themselves.
Let's start with an example from recent negotiations. The owner of a creative textile brand launched an advertising campaign in Yandex Direct to increase sales on Wildberries. Potential buyers click on the ad peru mobile database and get to the cards of his products on WB. Due to external traffic, it is possible to sell more than Wildberries itself can. During the conversation, the entrepreneur is indignant: "Why the hell am I driving traffic to Wildberries at my own expense? I increase their traffic, promote their site. And besides, visitors to my ad calmly buy from other sellers on the same WB! I want to increase the recognition of my brand, not Wildberries!"
Advantages of marketplaces for the seller
Multi-million traffic (395 million visits in July 2023 for WB and 394 million for Ozon).
Wide sales geography: all regions of Russia plus a number of neighboring countries: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, etc.
Advanced logistics. Delivery in 1-2 days to most cities in Russia.
The platform takes care of customer service: sales, payment acceptance, delivery, fitting, return of goods.
Disadvantages of marketplaces for the seller
☒ Overwhelming competition. For example, on WB in the category "Women's blouses and shirts" there are 121,000 products from 14,000 sellers.
☒ The TOP in the category are the products that sell best, that is, often consumer goods. It is not easy for a manufacturer to break through with their product. Sellers are forced to resort to absurd self-buyouts, spending money on buying their own products so that the platform's algorithms raise them to the TOP. Products not in the TOP sell hundreds of times worse. In the same category "Women's blouses", for example, a product from the TOP was bought more than 100,000 times, a product from the second page - 90 times. And since there are only 1,200 pages with 100 products in this category, those in the middle or at the end have single sales.
☒ Deliberate brand blurring occurs on all platforms: Wildberries, Ozon, Yandex Market, etc. For example, on WB, the brand is represented by a microscopic 120 x 50 px logo on the product card. The seller's page and the brand page lack the functionality of a full-fledged store and are only a listing of products. There is no main brand page with promotions, product selections, categories, and corporate style. As a result, the only thing left in the buyer's mind is "I bought this on Wildberries." Sellers only contribute to the further promotion of the marketplace with the success of their products and a wide range of products. Only well-known brands remain well-known; promoting a new brand on the marketplace is extremely difficult.