ePrice is the largest marketplace in Italy and was founded in 2000. It offers its customers 8 million products and has 4 million visitors a month. Also worth mentioning is the favorable commission that ePrice offers its online merchants. So in addition to the aforementioned basic fee that you only have to pay for one marketplace, the cost keeps extremely low.

High-flyers: the rapid success of the real.de marketplace

The real.de marketplace was able to sell well over 600 million euros on its online platform in 2020. Although there has been a lot of bad press due to the losses in regular retail, and the business is plagued by uncertainty and doubt in light of the never-ending pandemic, the real.de Marketplace has emerged as a viable platform and a growing goldmine. During its expansion in 2016, real bought the Hitmeister marketplace and merged it with real.de Marketplace: this guaranteed its rapid growth, as the well-known real brand attracted many customers and third-party retailers. The steady increase in third-party retailers ensures an ever-expanding reach and growing relevance as an additional sales channel. In a major survey conducted by the Händlerbund, the real.de marketplace even performed better than all other competitors: Nowhere did retailers feel better looked after than at real.de.

The real.de marketplace and e-commerce during the pandemic

It remains to be noted that almost 50% of e-commerce sales this year were made through marketplaces such as real.de Marketplace. This development was fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic and represents a phenomenon that will continue to intensify in the coming years. In America, for example, Walmart has successfully launched its e-commerce operations, through its marketplace comparable to real.de. More and more companies will discover Marketplaces as the best platform for themselves. Amazon, Alibaba or eBay seem to have divided the cake among themselves, but here in Europe something is moving: The International Marketplace Network (IMN) has formed and is increasingly becoming a force to be reckoned with.

real.de Marketplace and International Marketplace Network (IMN) – Advantages and Disadvantages

The only downer is that Bol.com, the No. 1 from the Benelux countries, is not there. Polish e-commerce giant Allergo.pl has also not yet joined the International Marketplace Network (IMN). However, it is not intended to leave it at the 4 platforms already participating: The International Marketplace Network (IMN) is holding intensive talks with other marketplaces and sees itself as the pan-European network for online commerce. The IMN leaves no stone unturned to live up to this claim and become even more comprehensive. Another important focus of IMN, is the perfection of business processes. In a successful test phase with 25 participating merchants per marketplace, it became clear that IMN is a concept with a future. Listed items can be transferred anywhere and information can be customized. Only tax and legal aspects have to be manually adjusted by the respective retailer, because they vary from nation to nation.

International Marketplace Network (IMN) – Details and Logistics

Although it is the full intention of International Marketplace Network (IMN) to compete with Amazon’s PanEU program, a good logistics concept must first be established. It is currently still the case that as a real.de marketplace retailer you have to ship from your own warehouse, but they are already working feverishly on a solution behind the scenes. The vision of borderless trade is becoming more and more of a reality every day. The strengths of the European market are the diversity of regional products and high quality standards: This gives retailers the tools to raise their profile against Amazon and other companies and to emancipate themselves more from them. Risks are minimized and it is easy to distribute your products on a wide variety of channels.