Due to the strike of Wildberries partners, AKIT and the Ministry of Industry and Trade will develop new rules for the industry

The Association of Internet Trade Companies (AKIT), together with members of the commission under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, will develop standards for interaction between marketplaces and owners of pick-up points (POIs). About this, representatives of the marketplaces Wildberries, Ozon, “Yandex.Market, Sbermegamarket,Avito”, representatives of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), AKIT and deputies agreed during two meetings in the State Duma this week, Artem Sokolov, president of AKIT, told Vedomosti on March 24, 2023 and confirmed the press services of Wildberries and Ozon.

Previously, a similar document was developed and adopted for marketplaces and sellers of goods and has shown its effectiveness in resolving disputes between business entities, says Sokolov. After the standards are developed, they will be sent for examination to the Duma committees on industry and trade and on the protection of competition, which are headed by Vladimir Gutenev (United Russia) and Valery Gartung (Fair Russia). In the future, the implementation of this document will be considered by the commission for creating conditions for self-regulation in electronic commerce under the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia, he specified.

At the end of July 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Trade created a commission that will monitor compliance with the standards for the work of marketplaces with sellers. It included representatives of Wildberries, Ozon, AliExpress, Lamoda, Yandex Market, as well as the Ministry of Industry and Trade, AKIT, Opora Rossii, A. Distribution and the Russian Perfume and Cosmetic Association. The commission started working in August 2022.

Deputies of all factions of the State Duma and representatives of major Russian Internet sites held a meeting on March 24 to discuss measures to regulate the industry. The meeting itself was held behind closed doors. According to the first deputy chairman of the Duma Control Committee, Dmitry Gusev (A Just Russia), changes are needed so that the fast-growing industry can develop in the future without the suffering of sellers, buyers, and companies.

“This industry has self-regulation, which until now did not take into account the interests of the pickup point. Representatives of the industry assured us that they are ready to conclude an agreement with the PVZ on the principles, methods and technology of work,” Gusev emphasized. According to him, this is the first agreement that was adopted at the meeting, which was also attended by representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Federal Antimonopoly Service. In addition to this, the deputies of all factions decided to hold meetings with other participants in the e-commerce market.

“We plan to meet with other industry participants: sellers, pickup points, couriers, logisticians. We do this in order to understand what exactly needs to be regulated at the legislative level. This is a big serious work, I am sure that it will bring results,” concluded Gusev.

The conflict between the PVZ owners and Wildberries began in mid-March. Due to the introduction of fines for the PVZ for returning goods due to marriage or substitution, some of the owners of the points went on strike, closing some of the branches and coming to the central office of the marketplace. As a result, Wildberries announced the closure of those outlets whose owners “choose uncivilized forms of dialogue.” But such methods failed to stop the scandal. The State Duma and the Ministry of Labor became interested in the situation, Wildberries came to back down and freeze fines.

Marketplaces can deprive the right to impose fines on partners at their own discretion, Vedomosti wrote earlier. The rules by which sites will be able to impose such sanctions are proposed to be fixed by amendments to the draft law of the “fifth antimonopoly package”, which is currently being considered in the State Duma.

The representative of the FAS said that Wildberries needs to create an internal arbitration to consider sellers’ disputes and optimize the company’s offer, making it understandable and transparent. The Antimonopoly Agency expressed its readiness to provide its position when considering the most controversial issues when the issue cannot be resolved using the feedback system or arbitration between the parties. The interlocutor noted that the department monitors the practices used by online platforms and how they resolve emerging disputes in order to decide on further actions of the antimonopoly service.

“The development, improvement and control of the online commerce industry must be implemented through self-regulation,” a Wildberries representative told Vedomosti after a meeting in the State Duma. During the meeting, it was noted that the e-commerce market is actively growing and has an important social and economic function for the state, said Alexei Minaev, Deputy Managing Director of Ozon. This segment not only provides the population with a wide range of goods, but also stimulates the development of small and medium-sized businesses in the regions, so it needs support, first of all, in the development of self-regulation initiatives, he says. According to Minaev, “government regulation is a necessary component of any market, but any changes require thorough consideration in a dialogue with market participants so as not to harm the developing industry.”

“Today, the largest marketplace occupies less than 10% of the retail market and, despite the fact that both Wildberries are large and Ozon are just as big, they are still much smaller than [офлайн-ритейлеры] “Magnet” And X5”, says Data Insight partner Fedor Virin. According to him, there are many large stores and marketplaces on the market, that is, “today there is no monopoly, and there are no prospects for its formation in the near future, which means that market mechanisms are able to cope with the current situation.”

At the same time, Data Insight, the latest study of the online commerce market, says that the main growth in online sales in 2022 was provided by large universal marketplaces. In the second half of 2022, their share reached a record 73% in the total number of orders. Similar data for “Infoline-analytics”.

It is not known whether the FAS analyzed the market and the share of Wildberries and other marketplaces on it, and most importantly, which market – the entire retail, online retail or PVZ, says Alexei Kozhevnikov, CEO of ANO Digitalization and New Technologies, member of the FAS Public Council. According to him, “the number of complaints filed with the FAS and court cases won against marketplaces show that self-regulation, unfortunately, does not protect suppliers from the market power of digital platforms.”

Kozhevnikov noted that the antimonopoly process is not fast, for example, the FAS has been investigating Booking.com for two years. He does not rule out that the antimonopoly service will be forced to intervene in the conflict, especially if the legislature does not.