First it was Facebook Shops, now it’s Facebook Shop live in the app, as the social media giant continues to roll out new features to support ecommerce and draw in sellers more familiar with established competitor marketplaces like Amazon or eBay.
Third-party sellers sold on average more than 6,500 products per minute on Amazon Marketplace in the past year, with over 450,000 sellers utilizing Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA). In recent months, however, FBA has been placing restrictions due to pandemic volumes. One option is using Merchant Fulfilled Network (MFN); here’s how it works.
Kroger plans to launch a marketplace this fall through a partnership with French platform provider Mirakl, adding 50,000 items from sellers initially to its assortment, including toys and household goods in addition to specialty foods, international foods and natural and organic items. The marketplace is an expansion of Kroger Ship.
Google has been busy on the ecommerce front lately, announcing a plan to drop commission fees for sellers who use its Buy on Google checkout service, while making its pilot-tested product recommendation engine publicly available to let sellers display more personalized offers.
Amazon as of Sept. 1 will require third-party sellers in the U.S. to provide their business name and address in their seller profile, a requirement that has been in place for some time in Europe, Japan and Mexico based on government regulations. The benefits to consumers are not entirely clear, ditto the impact on counterfeiting.
Moving forward, one thing is certain: Marketplace facilitator laws will continue to evolve. We’re already seeing some changes in the U.S., with Louisiana going after high-volume 3P sellers during COVID-19. But states are also going to great lengths to pursue lodging and communications platforms and even food delivery services.
The European Union is making sweeping updates to how retailers need to calculate Value-Added Tax (VAT) when selling goods into its member countries, effective July 1, 2021. Peter Boerhof, EU VAT director for Vertex, explains the various changes and their significance, and the impact for companies selling goods into Europe.
Amazon is taking a serious run at counterfeit sellers on its marketplace, with the creation of a Counterfeit Crimes Unit that includes former federal prosecutors, investigators and data analysts. The company said it has limited counterfeit complaints to 0.1% of items listed, but legislators and media investigations have still taken it to task.
Brands are challenged with finding a way forward even when traditional DTC models threaten to crack—and thinking outside the box to find the post-coronavirus formula for success. Fortunately, DTC doesn’t just mean selling on your own site. Here are some of the strong benefits of adding marketplaces to your DTC channel mix.
Walmart has made another move in the never-ending ecommerce battle with market leader Amazon, through an alliance with ecommerce platform titan Shopify that gives Shopify’s 1 million-plus merchants access to Walmart’s online marketplace.