Wildberries opens direct access – Kommersant FM

Chinese sellers will contact Wildberries and start trading without intermediaries. The marketplace began working with manufacturers from China, the head of the company Tatyana Bakalchuk told RBC. Russian business, according to her, will remain a priority, and the site’s entry into the Chinese market will not affect it.

At the same time, this could hit hard for many intermediaries who have built a business on importing goods from China. The situation was profitable for the marketplace, but now it is ready to take the margin for itself, noted Alexey Fedorov, Chairman of the Council for the Development of Electronic Commerce of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry:

“A gigantic ecosystem has formed around Wildberries: 20-year-old guys told each other how best to buy goods in China and then sell them at a premium in Russia, despite the fact that another 10 thousand people are selling exactly the same thing. We are talking about a huge number – hundreds of thousands – of small entrepreneurs for whom the turnover on Wildberries amounted to 2-3 million rubles. per month.

Their main source of income was that they were actually employees of the Wildberries purchasing department, who took on all the risks. It was platform friendly.

At the same time, the platform created a team in China about two years ago, more than 300 people, which during this time made a huge breakthrough by reaching an agreement with players in China – those who used to trade on AliExpress. The latter is slowly being phased out, and these Chinese merchants will now launch on Wildberries.

The marketplace has established brilliant logistics with the Celestial Empire, and most Russian clients, by and large, will not even feel the difference.”

Now Wildberries is also represented in Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Israel and Azerbaijan; Chinese sellers will be able to supply their goods there too. The potential sales market is even wider: the site has registered its trademark in the countries of Southeast Asia, Japan, India and even North Korea.

But Russian sellers are also interested in expansion, emphasized Ayrat Khaidarov, sales director of MV-Tuning (it sells auto parts): “Everything we do – design and production – is created here in Russia. Of course, for those sellers who import products from China to the Russian Federation, brand them under their logos and then sell them through Wildberries, the threat is obvious. That is, they will need to adapt, redo something, change marketing.

At the same time, if the marketplace set up exports to China, it would be absolutely great, but they are setting up imports.”

But Russian sellers will retain an important advantage – delivery times. Exchange rates will also help withstand competition, co-founder of the Koftenyshi store Alexander Blokhin is sure: “In the production of clothing, an important component is labor. A worker’s salary in Russia is paid in rubles. Salaries in China are tied to foreign currency. It is now growing, and therefore the cost of clothing from China is also increasing.

The second point is timing. Even a few days are critical for marketplaces. Depending on which warehouse you deliver goods to, you will have different sales volumes. What can we say if delivery from China takes two to three weeks.”

Wildberries was also presented in the West: in the USA, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. But after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the company left these markets.

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Ivan Koryakin