After rolling out its online store in Germany in January, Russia’s biggest online retailer, Wildberries, has started to operate in France, Italy and Spain, with dedicated sites and mobile apps tailored to the local markets, the company said in a statement. The online retailer that first launched in 2004 currently offers about four million items from nearly 40,000 brands on these websites, from sporting goods to clothing and footwear products, but it has already announced plans to expand its foreign ranges.
In Russia, the company offers over 5.5 million items from 88,000 labels. The fashion segment remains the company’s largest, generating more than half of its revenues.
As in Russia, Wildberries employs local logistics partners to deliver goods in each of these new countries. The items can be delivered to the customer’s home or one of its partner pick-up points in France and Spain. There are 2,500 such points in France and 1,900 in Spain. In Italy, only home deliveries are possible for now.
With these new national initiatives, Wildberries is now active in 13 markets. In 2020, Wildberries grew by 74 percent, generating around $6 billion in nine markets.
According to Data Insight, Wildberries controls around 13 percent of the Russian e-commerce market or more than twice the share of its nearest competitor, Ozon, which went public in the U.S. on Nasdaq at the end of last year.
