Shops in general sale – Kommersant

The growing popularity of e-commerce encourages entrepreneurs to actively launch their own shops for trading on marketplaces. Avito analysts recorded an increase in demand for the creation of such stores from scratch by 2.6 times year on year. According to experts, the popularity of such services will continue to grow, but in the near future we can expect the consolidation of sellers on large Internet sites, which will increase the threshold for entry into this segment for newcomers to e-commerce.

In the first quarter of 2023, the demand for turnkey services and the purchase of ready-made stores for trading on the marketplace increased 2.6 times year-on-year, calculated at the request of Kommersant in Avito. By the end of March of this year, in the overall structure of demand for ready-made businesses on Avito, the share of such stores almost doubled, to 9%. Interest in the creation and purchase of ready-made stores for trading on marketplaces, the head of the macro category “Ready-made business and franchising” and “Equipment for business” on Avito, Ilya Dudkovsky explains that this allows you to start selling on large online platforms with a low entry threshold.

According to the Data Insight forecast, in 2022 the volume of the e-commerce market grew by 38%, to 5.7 trillion rubles. At the same time, in the second half of 2022, the share of marketplaces in total sales exceeded 50% for the first time, and the total number of orders reached 73%.

The increased interest in buying ready-made stores to work on marketplaces coincides with the growing trend in the number of sellers on online platforms, says Ivan Kurguzov, Executive Director of Oborot.ru. In particular, according to the Moneyplace marketplace analytics service, in March the number of sellers at the two largest marketplaces — Wildberries and Ozon — grew by 85% year-on-year, amounting to almost 303,000 and 238,000, respectively. In addition, according to the Russian Post survey, 26% of respondents plan to become sellers, 29% already sell goods on online platforms.

At the same time, more and more entrepreneurs prefer to outsource the process of creating an online business to third-party specialists, says Ilya Kretov, director of the online sales growth platform Tinkoff eCommerce. At the same time, according to him, some aspiring entrepreneurs underestimate the amount of work to start a business on marketplaces. So, according to Tinkoff eCommerce, about half of the sellers with a turnover of less than 70 thousand rubles. per month stop selling on marketplaces within six months. At the same time, one of the most common reasons for business termination is the lack of knowledge and experience in trading on online platforms, Mr. Kretov clarifies.

At the same time, the segment of the sale and purchase of a ready-made and existing business in the form of a store on the marketplace is not yet particularly developed in Russia. This practice exists in the West, but in our country this trend is still being formed, the expert points out.

According to Ivan Kurguzov, the number of sellers on marketplaces, and, consequently, the demand for services for creating stores for trading on them, will continue to grow for several years, until the majority of distributors try to work on online platforms. However, experts warn that the vast majority of sales on marketplaces come from a few hundred of the largest sellers, and the entry threshold for new sellers has already risen significantly.

Alina Savitskaya