Amazon brings returnless refunds to Europe
Amazon has launched “FBA Returnless Resolutions” in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. FBA sellers who opt in can refund customers for items up to a maximum of €75 without the goods being returned. Amazon decides case by case whether this applies. This means the seller loses the item without compensation, and the return still counts towards the return rate. Read more on Ecommerce News 

More News

eBay grows by double digits
eBay increased its revenue by 14 percent to $3.2 billion in the third quarter of 2026. GMV rose 15 percent to $23.2 billion. Growth came mainly from the US, with GMV up 27 percent, compared with just 4 percent internationally. Drivers are recommerce, the C2C business and eBay Live, whose GMV continues to grow at triple-digit rates. See the full figures at eBay 

Ceconomy breaks the 500 million mark
MediaMarktSaturn parent Ceconomy increased its revenue by 5.3 percent to €24 billion in fiscal year 2025/26, according to preliminary figures. Adjusted EBIT rose by around 27 percent to roughly €515 million, beating its own target of €500 million. By 2028/29, it is set to reach around €800 million. Find out more at Ceconomy 

About You opens marketplace in Romania
About You has launched its marketplace in Romania, continuing its rollout after Greece and Luxembourg. Fashion brands from across Europe can sell there without minimum revenue or assortment requirements. More than 1,000 sellers with over 160,000 items are on board at launch. Get more details on Business Review 

Breuninger brings its marketplace to Poland
Breuninger has launched its marketplace in Poland, its fourth country after Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. At the same time, its online shop has gone live in eleven more European countries. It is now available in 24 markets in total. Breuninger has also expanded its loyalty programme Beyond, which has more than two million members, to six markets. See more at Breuninger 

EU tightens the screws on import parcels
After the minimum customs duty introduced in July comes the next levy: as of November 1, an additional handling fee of €2 per product category applies to direct imports from non-EU countries. Sellers and platforms have to pay it, while deliveries from EU warehouses are exempt. Get the full story on Heise

Crackdown News

Europe hunts down counterfeits
Following the €200 million fine in May, the European Commission has accepted Temu’s action plan: the platform must examine to what extent its algorithms promote illegal products and enable sellers to deliberately make such listings more visible. New figures show how big the problem is: EU customs and other authorities intercepted a record 196 million suspected counterfeit items worth €6.3 billion in 2025, 67 percent more than the year before. Most customs cases involved parcels from online retail. Read more on Heise (Temu)  and Ecommerce News (customs) 

Don’t want to miss any news? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter!

Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 02.11.2026 – Amazon’s no-return refunds, About You and Breuninger expand erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

REWE now delivers via Wolt

Since 15 September, shoppers in Cologne have been able to order their REWE groceries via Wolt and have them delivered within an hour at most. Five stores are taking part at launch, with more locations and cities to follow. The orders are picked in the store itself, and a Wolt courier takes it from there.

That is a different thing from the quick commerce made famous by Flink and Gorillas. The partnership follows a model known as instant retail – and in China, it has become a key growth driver of online retail.

Quick commerce and instant retail

The two terms are often used interchangeably, as both promise delivery within minutes rather than days. Strictly speaking, though, quick commerce describes a logistics model: a provider supplies customers from its own dark stores, usually with groceries and everyday essentials. Instant retail casts a wider net and includes deliveries from existing shops.

What sets quick commerce apart from instant retail

In China, where the model is most advanced, people hardly talk about quick commerce at all, says China retail expert Ed Sander. The term there is instant retail: ordering via an app, with delivery within an hour and often within 30 minutes – from a dark store or a shop alike.

Wolt runs both models

The company is building out both models at the same time. Its own online supermarket, Wolt Market, operates from dark stores. In August, Wolt added the Wolt Bio Market: 15 locations in eight German cities offering up to 1,800 organic products depending on the city, with Alnatura as its key assortment partner.

On the other side are brick-and-mortar retailers that fulfil orders from their own stores, with Wolt supplying the app, the reach and the couriers. Recent additions in Germany include:

• MediaMarktSaturn (July 2026): around 2,000 electronics products depending on location, delivered in about 35 minutes
• Mömax (August 2026): home & living products, initially from eight stores
• SuperBioMarkt (September 2026): organic range, pilot project in Düsseldorf
• REWE (September 2026): groceries, initially from five stores in Cologne

And this is no sideline: according to Wolt, retail now accounts for more than a quarter of its global sales (as of Q4 2025), with more than two million people worldwide ordering retail products through the app every month.

The Chinese model

In China, instant retail is already part of everyday life. Ed Sander estimates its share of Chinese e-commerce at around 10 percent – and rising fast, while traditional e-commerce and live commerce are stagnating. In episode 162 of our podcast “Let’s Talk Marketplace”, he breaks it down into three models:

1. Store plus warehouse: a supermarket with an attached warehouse and its own courier fleet, such as Alibaba’s Freshippo.
2. Front-end warehouse: dark stores in residential areas, mainly for fresh food, such as Dingdong Maicai.
3. Marketplace: retailers connect their inventory management system to a platform, pick orders themselves and hand them over to the platform’s couriers. Walmart and Decathlon, for example, work this way.

Wolt Market fits the second model; the partnerships with REWE, Mömax and MediaMarktSaturn fit the third. The product range is following a similar path, too. In China, instant retail started with groceries and urgent needs such as medicine.

Today, Chinese consumers can get almost anything delivered within the hour. Wolt is heading the same way, step by step, adding electronics, toys and home & living products.

Marketplace Universe Insight: With instant retail, the store becomes a fulfilment location. Retailers don’t need their own delivery network for this, but they do need an inventory management system that reliably reports available stock to the platform. Those who, like REWE, connect to several platforms in parallel also reduce their dependence on any single provider.

Why Europe won’t become China

Even so, Ed Sander doesn’t expect instant retail to take off on the same scale in Europe. Labour costs aren’t the issue, he argues – relative to average incomes, they are comparable. The real difference is population density. “In China they live vertically, we live horizontally,” says Sander.

On top of that, China has three internet giants pushing the model: Alibaba, JD.com and Meituan. According to Sander, they spent a combined total of more than 150 billion renminbi on consumer discounts last year to win customers. Europe has seen nothing like this subsidy race.

Against this backdrop, Wolt is treading carefully. New partnerships start out in selected major cities, and Wolt has not said how many more locations and cities will follow. It is also targeting categories that Sander sees as viable in Europe – those where order values and margins are high enough, such as consumer electronics. And many grocery orders are large: according to Wolt, 48 percent of grocery baskets contain ten or more items. That matters, because larger baskets are what pays for the costly last mile.

Conclusion

Wolt is building an instant retail model along Chinese lines, with its own dark stores and a growing marketplace for brick-and-mortar retailers. Unlike in China, this is happening step by step, with a focus on major cities and on categories that can bear the delivery costs. Structurally, Wolt looks most like Meituan, whose core business is also food delivery and which uses its courier network for retail.

The open question is how much leverage Wolt will gain over retailers. REWE, for one, is rolling out its express delivery via other platforms in other German cities at the same time, treating Wolt as one channel among several.

Key learnings

• Quick commerce describes delivery from a provider’s own dark stores; instant retail also includes delivery from existing stores.
• Wolt runs both models: Wolt Market and Wolt Bio Market as dark stores, plus connected retailers such as REWE, MediaMarktSaturn, Mömax and SuperBioMarkt.
• According to Ed Sander, instant retail is the most important growth area of e-commerce in China.
• In Europe, lower population density limits the model to major cities and to categories with high order values or large baskets.
• For retailers, the platform is an additional sales channel, not an exclusive partner.

Want to learn more about instant retail in China? Then check out our podcast episode with Ed Sander.

Enjoyed this article? The Marketplace Universe Weekly is our free newsletter – every Monday, the latest marketplace news, platform updates, our newest posts, and the insights that matter, delivered straight to your inbox. So you never miss a thing. Subscribe here: https://marketplace-universe.com/newsletter/

Der Beitrag Instant Retail: What Wolt Is Learning from China erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

AliExpress and YouTube launch affiliate partnership in Europe
Following the launch in South Korea, AliExpress and YouTube are bringing their affiliate partnership to Germany, the UK, the US and Brazil. Creators can select AliExpress products directly in YouTube Studio and link them in videos, Shorts and livestreams in return for a commission. Find out more on ChannelX 

More News

eBay cuts around 1,000 jobs
eBay is cutting around 9% of its global workforce. This comes despite strong business in luxury goods, collectibles, refurbished products and the Depop acquisition. The aim is to simplify operations and shift resources to its fastest-growing areas. The marketplace had already cut 800 jobs in February. Get more details on Reuters 

Amazon to invest €16 billion in Germany
Amazon plans to invest around €16 billion in Germany in 2027, including €4.8 billion in cloud and AI infrastructure around Frankfurt. In logistics, the money will mainly go into robotics and upgrading its sites. Around 3,000 additional jobs are currently being created there. See more on WirtschaftsWoche

Amazon raises FBA logistics surcharge
Amazon is raising its fuel and logistics surcharge for FBA, introduced only in April, from 1.5 to 2 percent as of November 2. The increase applies in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and the UK, among others. On average, Amazon expects additional costs of around 2 cents per unit. For Multi-Channel Fulfillment, the new rate applies from November 19. Read more on Onlinehändler-News 

Otto and Walmart open up to AI agents
Otto is making its APIs accessible to AI agents via the open AI interface standard MCP. The first use case is a ChatGPT plugin that offers product advice and checkout on otto.de. In parallel, Otto is testing ads in ChatGPT. Walmart goes further, giving AI agents their own customer accounts with spending limits, which they use to shop via an MCP gateway. Get more on Otto and LinkedIn (Walmart) 

refurbed launches in the UK and expands trade-in
After 24 European markets, the Vienna-based refurbished marketplace is now also live in the UK. In addition, refurbed is expanding its trade-in offer. In 15 countries, it now also buys tablets, game consoles, laptops and smartwatches from private customers. See more on ChannelX (UK) and ChannelPartner (trade-in) 

zooplus launches marketplace in Spain
zooplus has opened its marketplace in Spain, starting with 10,000 products. In Germany, its marketplace range has tripled and the number of sellers has more than doubled since the launch in August. Check out more on LinkedIn 

Buy Box News

ChatGPT gets a buy box
ChatGPT now highlights a single retailer for product queries, complete with price and its own “Shop at” button. The feature is part of the new shopping layout rolled out with “Intelligent UI”. Retailers that send product feeds to ChatGPT get priority, even when others sell the same product for less. See more on LinkedIn

Don’t want to miss any news? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter!

Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 26.10.2026 – ChatGPT gets a buy box, AliExpress taps YouTube’s creators erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

These are the 38 most relevant European marketplaces for sports in 2026

Last Update: October 26, 2026

A market under pressure

Running boom, outdoor boom, health trend: the stories around sport sound good. The business behind them looks less rosy. Tariffs, cautious consumers and heavy discounting have squeezed brands and retailers, and growth in 2025 was modest at best.

Nike shows how hard it has become. In fiscal 2026, its revenues in Europe, the Middle East and Africa fell by 3 percent currency-adjusted, and its own direct channels lost 9 percent. Decathlon did better, with net sales up 4 percent to €16.8 billion, yet its digital share barely moved. ECDB’s figures for sports equipment tell the same story: online is stuck at roughly a quarter of the market.

The bright spot at Decathlon is telling. Its marketplace grew by 49 percent in France and 45 percent in Spain. When demand stagnates, volume moves to the platforms with reach and assortment, and the rest fall away. Our Marketplace Quadrant sports 2026 shrinks accordingly, from around 50 to 38 platforms.

What’s new in the 2026 quadrant

Sports is our trickiest category: apparel, shoes and equipment come at a crossroads between fashion, shoes, hobby and even electronics. We filled the gaps with our own research and included only platforms with a genuine third-party marketplace and a relevant sports range. The axes now run from deal-driven to brand-driven and from everything marketplace to specialised marketplace.

New in

buycycle – Europe’s go-to marketplace for used bikes, now expanding into other sports.

StockX – the global reference for authenticated sneaker resale.

Klekt – Europe’s original sneaker marketplace, under new ownership since 2025.

Erli – one of Poland’s fastest-growing marketplaces.

Empik – Polish marketplace whose third-party business is booming.

Out

TradeInn (closed its marketplace in 2025), JD Sports, Sportdeal (no 3rd-party marketplace in Europe), Next, MediaMarkt, Worten, CDON, Breuninger, Debenhams, Galeries Lafayette, John Lewis, La Redoute, ellos, Farfetch, Outlet City Metzingen, Showroomprivé, Privalia (all too little sports focus), Trendyol (outside of our European scope).

On our watchlist

Sigma Sports – the UK cycling and triathlon specialist announced a curated marketplace for summer 2026.

The most important players

The generalists

• Amazon – Europe’s largest sports marketplace by far, equally strong in deals and brands.
• eBay – new and used goods side by side, especially relevant for equipment.
• Kaufland – the most dynamic generalist: live in the Netherlands since September 2026, Spain is next.
• Allegro, bol, Otto, CDiscount, eMag, Galaxus, Skroutz, Erli, Empik, Manor – Europe’s local heroes with strong presences in single country markets
• Temu – deep in deal territory, with mostly unbranded sports goods.

The specialists

While the generalists opened the sports industry for marketplaces, a lot of interesting specialist platforms have since then evolved – some of them more than capable to conquer market shares from the generalists:

• Decathlon is the biggest marketplace in Europe solely focussed on sporting goods. The originally French player is growing strongly all over Europe and is hard at work to establish their marketplace in more and more countries – at the moment the marketplace for Decathlon.hu is in the works.
• Sprinter is a huge sports marketplace and stores chain in Spain, Portugal and Netherlands. At the close of 2023, they weathered an insolvency, but they seem to be back on track now. 
• Alltricks specializes on mostly bike, running, and training.
• Obelink is a Dutch marketplaces concentrating solely on Outdoors adventures and camping equipment.
• Private Sports-Shop is a specialised off-price marketplace just for the sports industry.
• Stadium is the Nordic sports retailer with its own marketplace, Stadium Connect.
• Bulevip is the Spanish specialist for padel and racket sports.

Fashion platforms and department stores

• Zalando – Europe’s fashion platform with a deep sportswear and sneaker range.
• About You – sportswear and sneakers for a younger crowd, now part of the Zalando group.
• ASOS – UK fashion platform with a strong activewear offer.
• Modivo – shoes and fashion for Central and Eastern Europe.
• Spartoo – French footwear specialist with sports shoes in its range.
• Shein – ultra-cheap activewear at scale.
• El Corte Inglés – Spain’s department store with a full sports department.
• Wehkamp – Dutch department store with a solid marketplace.
• Very – UK generalist with a strong sportswear range.

Off-price: clearance in a crisis

Full warehouses and falling prices: the sports industry needs ways to clear stock without damaging its brands. Closed member clubs and curated off-price marketplaces do exactly that, discreetly and away from full-price channels. That makes them one of the few segments in this quadrant with real momentum.

• BestSecret – premium off-price club in 28 countries, currently building a dedicated sport and outdoor division.
• Secret Sales – UK off-price marketplace where brands such as Puma sell their overstock themselves.
• Veepee – Europe’s flash-sale pioneer, with its own marketplace Brandsplace.
• Limango – Otto’s shopping club for families, with plenty of sport for kids and parents.
• Fashion Days – eMAG’s off-price fashion platform with a strong sports range.
• Private Sport Shop – flash sales devoted entirely to sports brands.

Resale: where the action is

Hardly any new marketplaces are launching in sports, with one exception. In resale, platforms are still being founded, funded and bought, and new concepts keep appearing. It is the one part of the sports platform market where there is still life in the place.

• buycycle – Munich-based marketplace for used bikes, expanding into running, ski and surf since taking over Everide in 2025.
• StockX – the global sneaker exchange, built around authentication.
• Klekt – Europe’s sneaker marketplace, bought by Responsible in November 2025.
• Also worth watching: Troc Vélo, Alltricks’ mainly C2C platform for used bikes and outdoor gear in France, and Vinted, the C2C platform that is still the first stop for second-hand sportswear.

The flip side: Restocks went bankrupt and Laced Europe entered administration in September 2026. Resale is lively, but far from stable.

Conclusion: Brands rediscover their partners

For years, the big sports brands pulled back from retailers to sell direct. Nike went furthest and even walked away from Amazon in 2019.

That era is over. In May 2025, Nike started selling directly to Amazon in the US again, for the first time since 2019. In Europe, Nike’s own direct channels are shrinking while wholesale holds steady.

For marketplaces, this is good news with strings attached. The Amazon deal is US-only and runs on wholesale terms, and brands come back on their own conditions: curated, gated, in control. Platforms that can offer exactly that, from specialists to off-price clubs to generalists with strict brand programmes, stand to gain the most.

Have we missed a marketplace? Do you have any input to add to our quadrant? Let us know!

Check out all our other Marketplace Category and Country Quadrants here!

Der Beitrag Marketplace Quadrant Sports 2026 erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

Amazon price history arrives In Europe Just Ahead of Peak Season

Amazon introduced price history in 2024. By its own count, more than 50 million customers worldwide have checked it, and in 2026 the chart was extended to 30, 90 and 365 days. Amazon names the US, UK, Canada and India as markets where the feature is available.

Germany has now joined, at least in part, as the first EU market in our checks. On 20 August, the German e-commerce trade outlet Onlinehändler News reported that a “Preisverlauf” (price history) link had started to appear next to the price on some product pages. It opens a chart inside Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, with a choice of one month, three months or one year. A footnote in the panel states that the chart shows the lowest suggested offer per day (per week in the one-year view), shipping costs excluded. The rollout was uneven: not every product and not every channel showed the link, and some analysts speculated that Amazon was running an A/B test.

The timing matters. Amazon’s Prime Deal Days ran on 6 and 7 October, Black Friday follows on 27 November and Cyber Monday on 30 November. Shoppers who previously needed external trackers to put promised savings to the test can now do it inside the shop.

Amazon’s own seller rules already tie deals to real prices

Amazon’s German Seller Central documentation sets the frame. A manufacturer’s recommended price (UVP) must match a price that the seller or other retailers actually applied, and Amazon may hide a UVP it cannot verify.

Amazon has also tightened its own internal checks this year. Since April, validation of the List Price and UVP has been stricter; since May, Amazon has changed how it calculates the Typical Price (“Was Price”) — now based on a 90-day look-back. Sellers who discount constantly risk shifting their own reference-price baseline downward, and if Amazon cannot establish a valid reference price at all, the strikethrough price can disappear from the listing entirely.

For event deals such as Prime Day, Amazon separately sets a price ceiling: the highest price at which an item still qualifies. It is derived from the product’s reference price, the lowest selling price across all sellers in the previous 30 days and the lowest new-condition offer. The first two carry a required minimum discount, and peak events may demand a higher one.

Two different 30-day clocks are running at once

It’s worth keeping these two mechanisms apart, because they easily get confused. One is Amazon’s own internal reference-price logic described above — a 90-day check Amazon runs on itself to decide whether a strikethrough price is even allowed to show. The other is a separate, legally mandated rule that applies to any advertised price reduction, regardless of platform: the lowest price charged in the preceding 30 days. Amazon’s own system doesn’t replace this legal requirement — it sits on top of it. As Michael Frontzek, Marketplace Strategist at mi-commerce, puts it: “Amazon checks its reference prices under its own rules” — on top of, not instead of, the legal 30-day baseline sellers already have to respect.

The EU’s 30-day rule is universal, but its execution can differ

The Omnibus Directive (EU) 2019/2161 added Article 6a to the Price Indication Directive: an advertised price reduction must refer to the lowest price applied during a period of at least 30 days before it. Member states may set exceptions, for instance for perishable goods, so national details differ.

What shoppers see differs by store. In a quick check on 13 October, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it and Amazon.es displayed a lowest price of the last 30 days on several products, and Amazon.es also showed a median price. Amazon.nl showed a median price or a recommended retail price, and only Amazon.de offered the price chart. These are spot checks, and labels can vary by product and over time.

The Q4 calendar turns every discount into the reference point for the next one

Peak season used to be judged event by event. The 2026 calendar makes that harder: Prime Deal Days (6–7 October), an early Black Friday push in early November, Singles’ Day (11 November), Black Friday (27 November) and Cyber Monday (30 November). Several of them fall less than 30 days apart.

Michael Frontzek, Marketplace Strategist at mi-commerce, sees the pressure building there. “The biggest challenge for sellers isn’t Black Friday itself, it’s the discount spiral before it,” he says. “Prime Deal Days, Singles’ Day, Black Week and Cyber Monday: anyone who joins every event will eventually have to ask whether they still generate additional revenue or just give away margin.”

In Frontzek’s example, a product with a regular price of €99.99 costs €79.99 during the Prime Deal Days. The seller wants an attractive discount again a few weeks later — at Singles’ Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Under EU rule, the lowest price of the previous 30 days is the reference for any advertised reduction. Once €79.99 has been charged, any promotion within the following 30 days has to be measured against €79.99, not €99.99. The trade association Händlerbund describes the same squeeze for sellers whose promotions follow each other within 30 days, as around Black Friday and Christmas: the reduced price becomes the comparison price. The result is pressure to offer an ever lower price at each event.

Prime Deal Days and Black Friday are 51 days apart, outside the 30-day window — so the legal rule resets. But the price chart doesn’t forget. If a product already cost €79.99 during Prime Deal Days and is offered again at €79.99 on Black Friday, a shopper who opens the three-month view sees it immediately: this deal isn’t as exclusive as the strikethrough price suggests.

“The discount percentage tells shoppers how much they supposedly save. The price history shows whether the offer is actually special.”
Michael Frontzek, Marketplace Strategist, mi-commerce

Galaxus has done it before

Galaxus, the Swiss-German online retailer, has made price history public since 2021, in Switzerland and in Germany. At the launch it described itself as the first online retailer in Germany to show the historical price development of all products. Galaxus executive Oliver Herren said that getting a picture of price trends had previously been tedious for consumers, which is why Galaxus decided to open its data to them.

First, the retailer stated that more than 99% of its own prices, marketplace excluded, are set automatically, often several times a day, and that it has no influence on the prices of marketplace sellers. Second, in a 2024 Black Friday analysis, Galaxus said its category team does not adjust prices to make Black Friday Week discounts look better. Finally, a survey by GfK commissioned by Galaxus found that if a product had never been cheaper, four in ten Swiss respondents would buy immediately, while almost half would keep waiting.

Price history complicates planning for sellers

For sellers, the practical consequence is to stop treating events in isolation. Four habits now worth adopting:

• Plan Q4 as one price sequence. Each event can set a reference point for the next, and both the 30-day window and the three-month chart look backwards.
• Decide which events to join. Taking part in every event raises the question Frontzek put at the start: additional revenue, or margin given away.
• Check your own chart the way a customer does. The three-month view shows whether today’s deal price was already charged earlier this season.
• Keep reference prices verifiable. Amazon requires a UVP to match prices actually applied and may hide one it cannot verify.

Frontzek expects Black Friday to keep its weight. “I don’t think Black Friday will lose importance,” he says. “But sellers have to plan their pricing strategy far more long-term and can no longer treat each event in isolation.” In his view, Amazon is making discounts “not only more transparent for customers but also more complicated for sellers”: a high strikethrough price alone does not make a good offer, and the chart lets customers see more easily whether a supposed bargain is one.

Enemy or filter: verdict still pending

Price transparency is turning into a standard feature. Galaxus has offered it since 2021, Amazon has now followed. Whether other marketplaces will do the same is still unclear. But if you sell on either of those two or want to plan ahead, it might be advisable to already adapt to the possibility of transparent pricing on your products.

Key Learnings

• The 30-day rule and the price chart look at different horizons: events 51 days apart escape the rule, but not the three-month view.
• The same EU rule produces different shop windows. In our spot check, Amazon’s French, Italian and Spanish stores show a 30-day low, the Dutch store a median price or RRP, and only the German store offered the price chart.
• Amazon’s German event rules tie price ceilings to the 30-day low across all sellers plus a minimum discount.
• The chart shows the lowest suggested offer per day (per week in the one-year view), shipping excluded, for the product rather than for a single seller.
• Price trackers suggest Black Friday is often not the cheapest day, so a chart mostly makes visible what trackers already show.
• For sellers, Q4 is one price sequence, and each event is chosen by margin.

22.10.2026 – Written by Ricarda Eichler, Journalist and Author for OHN

Der Beitrag Price Transparency: Peak Season’s Biggest Enemy, or Its Best Filter? erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

In our marketplace portraits, we take a closer look at platforms that are of interest to third-party sellers in Europe. Today’s portrait features Allegro, the market leader in Poland – and asks for whom the step east pays off. 

Firmly rooted in Polish everyday life for more than 25 years

Allegro launched in 1999 and is firmly rooted in everyday life in Poland. There’s a saying there: if it’s not on Allegro, it doesn’t exist. According to a study by Minds&Roses, 61% of Poles search for products on Allegro, compared with 47% on Google. In Poland, 15.6 million active customers shop on the platform, up 3.1% year on year.

Allegro is a 3P marketplace without a large first-party business. Around 160,000 sellers, the vast majority of them based in Poland, offer more than 160 million active products. The strongest categories include Home & Garden, Electronics, Automotive and Health & Beauty.

From Polish market leader to a platform for Central Europe

Allegro has been active in Czechia since 2023, followed by Slovakia and Hungary in 2024. According to Allegro, 5.3 million active customers now shop in these three countries, 36% more than a year earlier. In total, Allegro reaches around 21 million active customers. More than 9 million customers across all four markets use the loyalty programme Allegro Smart!, which offers free delivery and free returns.

For 2026, Allegro expects group GMV of PLN 78.3 to 79.9 billion, around €18 billion, up from PLN 69.2 billion the previous year. The international segment is set to grow by 65 to 75%. International sellers are growing too: their GMV in Poland rose by 70% in the second quarter of 2026. Recent additions include s.Oliver and Keeeper.

“If your European expansion strategy stops at Western Europe, you’re leaving Europe’s fastest-growing e-commerce region on the table. Central Europe isn’t an emerging test market anymore—it’s an economic powerhouse,” says Antons Nesterovs, Head of Group Merchant Business Development at Allegro.

Western quality – but at the right price

Products from Western Europe have a reputation for high quality in Poland. But Polish customers shop pragmatically and with a close eye on price: paying more for the same product from a foreign seller is hardly an option for them.

That is why Allegro works best for D2C brands with a distinctive assortment, according to Allegro especially in Electronics, Home & Garden and Health & Beauty. Resellers have a harder time but find opportunities in Automotive, Home & Garden or recommerce. Sellers competing directly with local vendors can catch up through advertising and fast delivery. Allegro Analytics gives a first impression of the potential with category trends, competitor prices and search queries; its basic functions are initially free of charge.

Smart! and fast delivery determine visibility

Which offer appears at the top of a shared product page depends on factors including price, delivery speed, account quality, ratings, advertising and the Smart! badge. Super Seller status is a plus. It goes to business accounts with at least 50 orders in 30 days whose sales quality reaches “Super” or “Super+” on at least 14 of those days and never drops below “Good”.

Foreign sellers have two routes to fast delivery:

With One Fulfillment, orders placed by 8 pm are delivered the next day. According to Allegro, such offers win the Buy Box for almost a third of relevant products.

Marketplace Universe Insight: Alongside price, timing matters on Allegro. According to Allegro, almost half of all visitors arrive after 4 pm, and almost 30% of visits fall on the weekend. Sellers who deliver these orders days later lose out to local sellers offering next-day delivery. For foreign sellers, the delivery promise is therefore a lever that is often underestimated alongside price.

An easy start with onboarding programmes

To register, all you need is a registered company and an EU VAT ID. This is followed by an identity and bank check so that Allegro can process payments – including BLIK, a payment method popular in Poland. Offers can be listed in Polish or English, and automatic translation is available.

A German- and English-speaking onboarding team supports selected partners. On the technical side, Polish integrators such as Base and IdoSell are connected, as are ChannelEngine, Channable, Tradebyte and Rithum; JTL and plentymarkets have just been added or will be available shortly.

There is no fixed basic fee. Commission depends on category and final price including shipping costs; in Electronics it is around 4.5%, in Home & Garden 11%.

Through the Welcome Program, new sellers receive commission discounts worth up to PLN 10,000 gross for up to 90 days, plus 100 free Smart! shipments. Brands launching their official sales on Allegro can join the Top New Joiners programme by invitation and receive six months of free support from an account manager.

What sellers need to enter the market

Outlook

Over the next twelve months, Allegro plans to give brands more control over their presence, expand One Fulfillment for bulky and dangerous goods, extend Smart! and continue gaining market share in Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary.

Conclusion

For European sellers, Allegro is the obvious route into Poland and, increasingly, into Central Europe. Whether it pays off depends on assortment, price and delivery time. Sellers who assess the potential with Allegro Analytics beforehand and set up their logistics for next-day delivery will find a large, loyal customer base in a region that continues to grow.

Key Learnings

• In Poland, more people search for products on Allegro than on Google.
• Across Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, Allegro reaches around 21 million active buyers.
• Western European quality is valued but does not justify a premium for identical goods.
• D2C brands with their own assortment have the best chances, especially in Electronics, Home & Garden and Health & Beauty.
• Almost half of all visits happen after 4 pm – a late order cut-off and next-day delivery pay off.
• Common multichannel tools such as ChannelEngine, Channable and Tradebyte are connected, with JTL and plentymarkets being added now.

Allegro connects around 160,000 sellers with 21 million active buyers in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary. If you want to take the step into Central Europe, you can register as a seller here.

Der Beitrag Marketplace Portrait: Allegro erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

Black Friday: AI becomes the bargain hunter
A good half of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers in Germany plan to use AI to hunt for deals this year, according to YouGov – more than double last year’s share (23%). 66% trust AI to find the best offers, but only 8% would leave the purchase itself entirely to AI. During Black Weeks 2025, German online spending was 51% above the average of the remaining weeks. See the numbers on YouGov 

More News

easyShop launches in 21 markets
easyShop.com, the marketplace announced in June, is now live in 21 European countries. Sellers reach all markets through a single account without having to set up local entities. Operated by OnCommerce, the marketplace sells no goods of its own and therefore does not compete with its sellers. Get the full story on Retail News 

UK plans to make marketplaces collect VAT
The UK government plans to make Amazon, eBay, Temu and other marketplaces collect VAT on behalf of their sellers, according to media reports. The measure targets overseas sellers who avoid the tax and is expected to raise up to £1 billion. Read more on Reuters

IKEA expands its second-hand marketplace in Europe
Following the UK and Ireland, IKEA’s digital second-hand marketplace has now launched in Germany. Users buy and sell pre-owned IKEA furniture via a free IKEA Family account. Image recognition automatically adds product details and photos. Get more details at Ingka 

Shein streamlines European shipping for its sellers
Shein is launching its first European logistics service for marketplace sellers in Spain. Cooperative Logistics connects sellers with carriers such as GLS, FedEx and CTT. This is designed to make deliveries to Germany, France, Italy and Portugal easier. More European countries are set to follow. Discover more on Marketing4eCommerce 

Allegro opens up to Ukraine
Allegro has launched a pilot that lets Ukrainian customers buy more than one million products from selected Polish sellers. The initial focus is on winter essentials such as power generators, gas heaters and hygiene products, with Nova Post handling delivery in Ukraine. Read more on Reuters 

Too Good To Go moves beyond food
Too Good To Go’s surplus marketplace now also covers personal care, pet care, plants, supplements and household products. Partners in individual European countries include OBI, Hagebau, Auchan and Decathlon, as well as brands such as Nivea and Oral-B. See more on AFP 

One-Cart News

Google bundles retailers into one cart
Google has launched Universal Cart in the US, collecting products from different retailers in a single cart across Google Search and the Gemini app. The tool flags price drops and items back in stock, surfaces promo codes and handles checkout via Google Pay, including for Walmart, Target, Nike and many Shopify merchants. Find out more on Google  

Don’t want to miss any news? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter!

Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 19.10.2026 – AI storms Black Friday, UK plans to make marketplaces collect VAT erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

EU customs duty slows Shein, Temu and AliExpress
The new EU customs duty on small parcels is taking effect: according to bevh, revenue of Shein, Temu and AliExpress in Germany plunged by 35.5% to €566 million in the third quarter. The association attributes this mainly to the higher cost of small shipments from non-EU countries. See more at Handelsblatt 

More News

Amazon holds 63% of German online retail
Around 63% of German online retail runs through Amazon, according to IFH. Marketplace sellers alone accounting for 46.1%. Competitors are growing too: In 2025, Amazon added €3.2 billion, Otto and Zalando combined €1.4 billion, and Temu and Shein around €1 billion. IFH sees groceries as Amazon’s next growth area. Read more at IFH Köln 

Temu overtakes Shein in France
Temu is the new ultra-fast fashion leader in France. With a 1.9% volume share of the clothing market, the platform surpassed Shein’s previous peak of 1.7% at the end of March. Its growth came mainly at the expense of Shein, but also of Amazon. See the full story on FashionNetwork 

TikTok adds one-click checkout and AI shopping assistant
With “Buy Direct”, TikTok users will be able to buy from brands with a single click straight from the For You feed. A new AI assistant also recommends products in conversation and answers questions on sizing, availability and shipping. TikTok is thus taking shopping beyond TikTok Shop into the wider app. Get more details on TechCrunch 

Kaufland launches in Spain
One month after the Netherlands, Kaufland Global Marketplace is now also live in Spain – starting with 3,100 sellers and 10 million items. This expands the Kaufland network to nine countries. Find out more on LinkedIn 

Argos launches marketplace after test phase
After a test with 40 partners in July, Argos is now rolling out its curated marketplace “Trusted Sellers” at scale. More than 130,000 products from vetted third-party sellers are set to be available by the end of 2026, with over 70,000 already live. Furniture, home and toys are now joined by beauty, gifting and electricals. See more on Retail Gazette 

Ikea brings second-hand marketplace to UK and Germany
Ikea has expanded its second-hand marketplace for Ikea Family members to the UK and Ireland. Germany will follow on 14 October. In its existing six markets, the platform generated 95,700 listings and 15 million visits through the end of August. Read more at Ikea 

Recommerce keeps gaining ground
According to the eBay Recommerce Report 2026, 47% of consumers buy second-hand products at least once a month, up from 35% the year before. Second-hand electronics lead in Spain, while second-hand gifts are growing fastest in France. Find out more at eBay

Attention News

Vinted invests in live shopping app Tilt
Vinted has taken a stake in London-based live auction app Tilt. This gives it insight into a model that Whatnot, TikTok Shop and eBay are increasingly using to push into the second-hand market. The learning, according to MarketMaze: attention is becoming marketplace infrastructure. Read the full analysis on LinkedIn 

Don’t want to miss any news? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter!

Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 12.10.2026 – EU duty hits Temu and Shein, Amazon holds 63% erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

These are the 37 most relevant European B2C online marketplaces for Beauty & Care 2026

Last Update: October 10, 2026

Market overview: Beauty & Care e-commerce in Europe

According to ECDB, online revenue in European Care Products reached €28.2bn in 2024, grew to €31.0bn in 2025, and is on track for €33.9bn in 2026. Year-over-year growth is running at roughly 10% – well above the cross-category average.

Online penetration is still in the mid-teens. For context: Consumer Electronics is close to 40%, Fashion approaching 38%. Beauty & Care is the category most major e-commerce players are actively trying to capture – and the one with the largest share of spending still happening offline.

That gap is the market opportunity. For platforms, for brands, and for sellers who get their positioning right before the category matures.

Why we rebuilt the quadrant

The 2025 edition had around 50 platforms. This year: 37.

We applied the same methodology we use across all Marketplace Universe Category Quadrants: platforms need a real marketplace structure with external third-party sellers, meaningful category volume, and actual relevance for brands operating in this segment. Curated dropshipping models don’t qualify. Platforms without a 3P component don’t qualify. Turkey and Ukraine are outside our European scope.

We also changed the X-axis – from Budget/Luxury to Price Driven vs. Brand Driven. The old framing was too blunt. The new axis reflects how brands actually evaluate platform fit: not just price level, but the overall environment a platform creates for sellers.

What’s new

Six platforms are new in this edition:

• Boots – Mirakl-powered marketplace, live since 2023, now large enough to matter for brands targeting the UK health and beauty channel
• Dr. Max – pharmacy marketplace operating in Czech Republic and Slovakia; first CEE pharmacy entry in this quadrant
• Yves Rocher – opened its platform to external sellers in September 2024, moving from a pure own-brand DTC model to a curated marketplace
• Hebe – Polish beauty specialist; already in our 2026 Country Quadrant Poland
• Super-Pharm – Polish pharmacy-beauty platform; also in the 2026 Country Quadrant Poland
• Auchan – included based on its expanding marketplace activity and presence in our 2026 Country Quadrant France

What’s out – and why

Twenty platforms were removed. The reasons fall into a few clear categories:

Out of scope: Trendyol, n11 – Turkish platforms, outside European scope

No real 3P model: Globus, Manor – curated dropshipping, not a marketplace structure

Category volume too low: Kaufland, Cdiscount – Beauty & Care GMV too small

Market or platform deterioration: Showroomprivé – Beauty revenue down ~40% in H1 2026, BHV Marais – significant brand exodus following the Shein ownership stake; sold June 2026, Farfetch – financial difficulties; no longer operationally stable enough to include

Fashion/off-price focus with marginal beauty relevance: BrandAlley, Secret Sales, limango, Place des Tendances, La Redoute, Ellos, wehkamp, CDON, Etsy

The most important players

International generalists

Amazon is the dominant platform across virtually every European market in this category. Scale, delivery infrastructure, and third-party seller depth make it the default channel for most brands.

Temu and AliExpress anchor the price-driven end. Both are growing fast in mass-market personal care and cosmetics. Neither is a natural environment for brand-positioned beauty products – but both are capturing significant volume in the value segment.

bol, OTTO, Allegro, Carrefour, and Galaxus are the Local Hero generalists – strong national market positions with growing beauty marketplace structures. Zalando sits in a distinct position: technically a generalist, but with a curated beauty environment and strong brand credentials that place it clearly towards the Brand Driven end of the axis. Veepee and El Corte Inglés round out the generalist tier with relevant positions in France and Spain respectively.

Beauty and health specialists

The pharmacy-adjacent cluster is this quadrant’s most distinctive group – and the one that has changed most significantly since 2025.

• Douglas – pan-European, genuinely category-deep, the clearest brand-driven beauty specialist in the quadrant
• Yves Rocher – new entry; curated external seller model with strong brand-environment positioning
• Redcare Pharmacy – structural leader in the pharmacy/health-beauty space; present in multiple European markets
• DocMorris – pharmacy marketplace with health-adjacent beauty relevance; includes PromoFarma
• Boots – UK pharmacy marketplace via Mirakl; relevant for brands targeting the health-beauty channel
• Dr. Max – CZ/SK pharmacy marketplace; first structured 3P pharmacy entry from CEE
• Hebe, Super-Pharm – Polish beauty and pharmacy specialists; strong local market positions
• Superdrug – UK; more accessible price point than Boots or Douglas, clear specialist credibility
• Kruidvat – Netherlands; pharmacy-adjacent beauty with strong local relevance
• Miravia – Spain; category ambition, growing positioning between generalist reach and specialist curation
• Perfume’s Club – niche fragrance and cosmetics specialist; limited geographic scale but genuine category depth

Generalists expanding into beauty

Several fashion-first or department-store generalists have been investing in beauty as a category:

• John Lewis – UK; curated beauty section with brand-positioned environment
• ASOS – UK; growing beauty marketplace alongside its fashion core
• Next – UK; marketplace expansion includes beauty as a meaningful category
• Debenhams – UK; operating as a marketplace-native model with active beauty development
• Galeries Lafayette – France; strong brand environment, early stage as a beauty marketplace
• INNO – Belgium; department store with beauty relevance
• Åhléns – Sweden; Nordic department store entry
• Harvey Nichols – UK; small in marketplace terms, relevant for premium beauty positioning
• Skroutz – Greece; pure 3P model, beauty as part of broader general marketplace

All Eyes on TikTok Shop

No platform has moved faster in this category over the past 12 months.

TikTok Shop combines social discovery, influencer content, live shopping, and in-app checkout in a format that maps almost exactly to how beauty products get discovered and purchased by younger buyers. Beauty is its strongest category – by some distance.

It’s already included in our 2026 Country Quadrants for the UK, Italy, and Spain. The growth in those markets is the reason we’ve positioned it significantly above the horizontal axis: TikTok Shop is not behaving like a generalist with a beauty section. It’s behaving like a beauty-native platform that also sells other things.

For brands, the operational implications are real. TikTok Shop requires a content-commerce integration that most existing marketplace playbooks don’t cover. That’s the challenge – and the opportunity.Conclusion

Conclusion

Thirty-seven platforms. Stricter criteria than 2025. A category that is structurally more open than 12 months ago – more specialist marketplaces with real 3P models, more generalists committing to beauty, and TikTok Shop accelerating everything.

Online penetration still in the mid-teens means this category has more growth ahead than almost any other in European e-commerce. For brands, that means platform prioritisation matters now – before the consolidation that tends to follow rapid category growth.

Have we missed a marketplace? Do you have any input to add to our quadrant? Let us know!

Check out all our other Marketplace Category and Country Quadrants here!

Der Beitrag Marketplace Quadrant Beauty & Care 2026 erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

Live Commerce and Live Auctions: How TikTok Shop Sells in Real Time

Most TikTok Shop sellers start on the shop tab: list a product, write a description, let search and the algorithm do the rest. LIVE is a different muscle — a scheduled broadcast where a host sells in real time — and it’s new enough that many sellers who’ve mastered the shop tab have never tried it. Here are the key differences:

Marketplace Universe Insight: The shop tab sells to people who already know what they want. LIVE sells to people who didn’t know they wanted it yet — the format does the convincing a product description can’t. That’s also why LIVE takes more effort: a listing runs itself, a LIVE needs a host.

Do You Need LIVE? Getting Set Up

LIVE earns its place once you have at least one product that benefits from being shown, explained, or sold with urgency. If that’s you, setup itself is simple.

An active TikTok Shop account linked to TikTok, approved products, completed shipping settings, and stock on hand is all it takes. The same products that already sell through the shop tab become shoppable in LIVE too — nothing new to list.

Geographically, TikTok Shop’s own course material currently names Spain, France, and Italy explicitly. Germany isn’t in that documentation — but Prophete’s active use of LIVE there, including Live Auctions, shows the feature is already live in practice, ahead of the course library catching up.

How a LIVE Session Actually Works

Most LIVE failures, according to TikTok Shop Academy, trace back to the same handful of preparation gaps: wrong product links, unclear explanations, stock running out mid-stream, missed orders, delayed shipping. None of it is exotic — it’s logistics, handled before the camera turns on.

The physical setup doesn’t need to be expensive, but it does need to make the product easy to see and hear: lighting, a clean background, a stable camera, clear audio. A short test run catches most problems before a viewer sees them.

Where a team is available, splitting the work beats asking one person to run the whole session:

Smaller sellers often combine these roles, but planning who does what in advance holds regardless of team size.

A loose run sheet — welcome, a hero product demo, Q&A, a second product, a promotion, a closing recap — keeps the host from repeating points and gives viewers a reason to stay for the full session.

The questions worth pre-answering are predictable: size, color, what’s included, vouchers, delivery time, device compatibility. A question that keeps recurring is usually a sign the listing itself needs to be clearer.

Promotions get verified before the LIVE, not announced from memory — start and end time, eligible products, the correct SKU, and the price actually shown on the page.

One Variant: Live Auctions

Within any LIVE, a seller can swap the fixed price for a bidding one: mark a listing “auction only,” set a starting bid and countdown, and viewers bid until the timer runs out — the highest bid checks out automatically, a mechanic most viewers already recognize from eBay-style auctions. Two caveats: bids are binding and final, with no one-hour cancellation window, and TikTok’s documentation describes the feature as launched for collectibles and pre-owned luxury — though sellers like Prophete (e-bikes) suggest it’s broadened since, worth confirming with TikTok Shop directly.

Which Products Fit a LIVE (and When Auctions Make Sense)

LIVE tends to work best for products that benefit from being seen in motion, explained, or wrapped in some urgency — exactly the gap between it and the shop tab. Across sellers already running LIVE on TikTok Shop, a few patterns show up repeatedly.

High-ticket, demonstration-heavy products do well: Prophete, a 100-year-old German bicycle brand, sells e-bikes at four-digit prices across 16–17 hours of LIVE a week, entirely via Live Auctions — a rising bid holds attention on a considered purchase longer than a fixed price would. Collectibles work for the same reason: Deantramp, who moved from YouTube to TikTok, sells primarily through auctions to an active community that helps choose what goes up next.

Not every seller picks one format. Fobe, a Berlin luxury bag rental and resale startup, and Lomina split roughly evenly between standard LIVEs and auctions. Haar-Anker, a handmade hair-accessories brand founded by Saskia (“Sassi”) from Ribnitz-Damgarten, goes LIVE often but keeps auctions under a quarter of that time — a highlight, not the default.

The common thread: LIVE earns its place first; Live Auctions is simply the version to reach for once a specific product or moment can carry a bidding war.

Case Study: How Prophete Turned Its LIVE Into an Auction House

Prophete has been building bicycles in Germany for over a hundred years — not the profile most people associate with TikTok LIVE selling. The brand’s approach shows what happens when a heritage, high-ticket seller commits fully to the auction format instead of testing it on the side.

Prophete runs 100% of its TikTok content as Live Auctions, selling e-bikes and scooters at four-digit price points across an average of 16 to 17 hours of LIVE per week. In a single five-hour session, the brand reached 147,000 viewers and sold 124 premium e-bikes priced up to €1,300, generating close to $59,000 in sales from that one stream alone, with more than 3.5 million impressions and a 54x return on ad spend. Scaled across a full quarter at this pace, Prophete is generating a seven-figure revenue through TikTok Shop.

Where to Go Deeper

For sellers setting up their first Live Auction, TikTok Shop Academy covers setup, viewer engagement tactics, post-LIVE follow-up, and common compliance mistakes in more depth than fits here.

Key Learnings

• LIVE is a separate muscle from the shop tab: a scheduled broadcast with built-in urgency, versus a catalog people browse on their own — and in Live Auctions, the audience sets the price, not the seller.
• Setup is simple: an active TikTok Shop account linked to TikTok, products already approved for the shop tab, completed shipping, and stock — no new listings needed.
• Spain, France, and Italy are explicitly covered today; Germany isn’t listed, but Prophete’s active use there shows the feature is already live in practice.
• Running a session well comes down to preparation: team roles, a loose run sheet, pre-answered FAQs, and verified promotions determine whether a LIVE converts or exposes stock and shipping problems.
• Live Auctions is a bidding variant within LIVE, not a separate feature to learn from scratch — mark a listing “auction only,” set a starting bid and timer; bids are binding and final, and eligibility (reportedly collectibles and pre-owned luxury at launch) may have broadened since, worth confirming with TikTok Shop directly.

TikTok Shop is a livestream and social commerce platform that connects brands with shoppers directly inside the TikTok app, combining content, community, and checkout in one place. Learn more at TikTok Shop for Business.

Der Beitrag How TikTok Shop Live Works erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.