December 05, 2019, 00:53 / Business Exclusively by subscription

Decathlon enters the marketplace

The retailer's online store opened on Tmall Ksenia Virchenko The French Decathlon in Russia will be sold on a Russian-Chinese platform / Maxim Shemetov / TASS

The French chain of sports hypermarkets Decathlon has opened an online store on Tmall, part of AliExpress Russia, a joint venture of the Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group, Mail.ru Group, Megafon and RDIF. A representative of AliExpress Russia told Vedomosti about this.

Cooperation with Tmall is Decathlon’s first experience of working with a marketplace in Russia. Previously, it was possible to buy the retailer’s products only in retail stores and on the Decathlon website, the companies said in a press release. Decathlon hopes to attract new customers on Tmall, said Decathlon Russia CEO Jérémie Angélard; online stores are also planned on other Russian marketplaces. There are no agreements with the sites yet, a company representative warns.

The simultaneous development of your own online store and a platform on the marketplace is the right decision; these two channels will give a synergistic effect, says General Director of Infoline Analytics Mikhail Burmistrov: the audience of the marketplace is different from the audience of the retailer’s online stores and its circle of clients is expanding. And in order to effectively monetize the customers received on the marketplace, retailers need their own online stores, he explains.

Currently, Tmall customers have access to 300 Decathlon products in different categories: sports equipment, clothing and shoes. By the end of 2019, their number will double, promises a Decathlon representative: the retailer will expand the range depending on the requests of Tmall customers. Prices for Decathlon products in retail, online stores and on Tmall do not differ, a representative of the retailer assures.

Auchan began trading online through one of the Alibaba Group platforms

The hypermarket chain currently sells only non-food products on Tmall

Decathlon delivers orders from Tmall to all regions of Russia, continues the company representative, and costs from 200 to 1000 rubles. depending on the order size and delivery location. An order over 4,000 rubles. Delivery is free if it is not large.

Tmall provides Decathlon with a platform for posting goods; for each item sold, Tmall takes a commission; the representative of AliExpress Russia does not disclose the amount, but says that it depends on the category of the product.

Marketplaces are actively investing in attracting traffic to their platforms, Burmistrov knows, and Decathlon will be able to convert customers of the marketplace into buyers of its own online store, and placement on Tmall will provide the retailer with free brand promotion.

Cooperation between Tmall and Decathlon will expand the range of the online platform and attract a new audience to it, explains the benefit of the new cooperation, the CEO of AliExpress Russia. The main task of Tmall now is to expand the pool of partners in the clothing category, including large manufacturing companies, leading global retailers and small local companies.

Clothing and accessories are among the most popular products on the AliExpress Russia platform, the company said in a press release. According to a representative of AliExpress Russia, the company wants to present on Tmall the entire range of products most in demand among customers, and without clothes this is impossible.

Several sports brands already operate through Tmall: online sportswear stores Forward, Anta and Sport Point, the official distributor of Adidas, Puma, Reebok and Asics. The platform also features clothing and footwear brands such as Crocs, Keddo, Icebear, Amimoda, Milavitsa, Ardi, etc. The representative of AliExpress Russia also mentioned that Tmall is negotiating with several new brands, but did not name them.

In addition to Decathlon, other major distributors of sporting goods operating in Russia also have their own online stores: Sportmaster and Adidas.

Adidas products are also presented on almost any marketplace, says Data Insight partner Boris Ovchinnikov. These are not direct sales of the brand, as is the case with Decathlon, but a limited range sold either by the platform itself or by a third party. According to Ovchinnikov, Adidas is most fully represented on the Wildberries and Ozon platforms, and prices on these marketplaces are often significantly lower than on the official website, he notes.