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  

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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 

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

Shein’s profits slump
In its first quarterly results as a listed company, Shein reports a 67 percent drop in profit to $228 million. In Europe, sales fell by 13.9 percent. One reason: Shein had already raised prices and cut advertising before the EU’s €3 fee per product category took effect. Shein aims to counter this with more inventory in Europe and higher-priced brands – which, for Stefan Wenzel, marks its path to becoming an entirely ordinary competitor. Read more on Reuters (figures)  and on LinkedIn (analysis)

More News

Amazon brings GWD to Europe
Amazon is expanding its Global Warehousing and Distribution (GWD) service to Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK by the end of the year. Sellers will then be able to store their goods in bulk close to the factory, for example in Shenzhen. Only once demand arises will they distribute them to the FBA centers of the individual marketplaces. Get more details on Ecommerce News 

AliExpress lures shoppers with VIP status and discount codes
According to media reports, AliExpress is testing a free VIP program called Elite in markets including Germany, the UK and Spain. Customers who spend more than $800 a year receive, by invitation, a 5 percent discount, round-the-clock customer service and easy returns. Elite is seen as part of a shift towards branded goods and premium services. Meanwhile, “Local Day” is still tempting shoppers with codes worth up to €60 until October 7. Find out more on PYMNTS (Elite)  and teltarif (Local Day) 

JD and MediaMarktSaturn: EU takes its time
The EU Commission has once again extended its review of JD‘s planned takeover of MediaMarktSaturn. A decision is now due by November 4. That leaves the deal on a tight schedule: MediaMarktSaturn needs approval by November 10, otherwise the takeover could collapse for contractual reasons. Read more on on Exciting Commerce 

Prisma.fi becomes a marketplace
Finland’s S Group is opening its online store Prisma.fi to selected third-party sellers from Finland and the rest of Europe from October, powered by Mirakl. At launch, several dozen sellers are set to nearly double the assortment, which could grow tenfold in the long term. See more on Yle 

Pricing News

Germany’s top court overturns Prime price hike
A legal setback for Amazon: Germany’s Federal Court of Justice has ruled in the final instance that Amazon’s 2022 Prime price increase from €69 to €89.90 a year is invalid. The reason: the underlying clause in its terms and conditions lacked transparency. Amazon is now temporarily lowering the fee for long-standing members. Refunds of fees already paid are still pending in a separate class action. See the full story on Spiegel 

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Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 05.10.2026 – Shein’s profit drops 67%, Amazon loses Prime price battle erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

EU Tightens Customs Rules for Small Parcels from November
From November 1, a new EU-wide processing fee will apply to small parcels from non-EU countries. The European Parliament has given final approval to the sweeping reform of EU customs law, after the Council had already agreed in early September. The exact amount of the fee is still to be set by the European Commission. Find out more on Retail News

More News

Temu Lose Ground in Hungary as New EU Customs Charge Bites
Hungarian shoppers are ordering more cautiously from Temu, Shein and AliExpress, according to PwC Hungary, since the customs-duty exemption for parcels up to EUR 150 ended on July, 1 and a € 3 customs charge now applies per product category. Some European marketplaces are already benefiting. Even so, Temu remains Hungary’s largest online retailer, according to ECDB – alongside Finland, Croatia and Slovenia – after just three years in the market. Get more details on Daily News Hungary  and ECDB 

TikTok Launches TopSearch Globally
Through a new auction model, brands can now secure the top position in TikTok search results – including a customised title, description and creative. The aim is to reach users in the moment of purchase intent, which could prove especially relevant for sellers with products in TikTok’s search and shopping environment. See more on ChannelX 

Amazon Confirms Prime Big Deal Days for October 6-7
Amazon has confirmed the date for the next Prime Big Deal Days: on 6 and 7 October, Prime members will get 48 hours of exclusive deals across all categories, from home and kitchen to electronics, fashion and beauty. Read more on ChannelX 

Amazon’s EU Reach Levels Off
Amazon averaged 193.9 million monthly recipients across the EU in the first half of 2026, according to its latest DSA filing – a slight decline from 195.2 million in the second half of 2025. While reach fell in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, it grew 4 percent in the Netherlands, where bol is nonetheless pulling further ahead. See the full story on LinkedIn

Stealthy News

Payback has launched a marketplace beta
Payback has quietly launched a marketplace inside its app, built on Mirakl with 70 sellers and 23,000 SKUs in beta, after years of calling an affiliate business a marketplace. Sellers pay a monthly fee plus 7-15% commission, while Payback itself subsidizes the loyalty points – a pitch aimed at Germany’s 18 million active app users.  Read more on Payback 

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Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 21.09.2026 – New EU customs fee hits small parcels, and TikTok launches TopSearch globally erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

EU Commission targets cheap Chinese imports
The European Commission is preparing new legislation to close compliance gaps for imports via e-commerce platforms, according to media reports. It includes liability for marketplaces, a new market surveillance fee and centralised enforcement. The draft doesn’t explicitly name China, but clearly targets platforms like Temu and Shein. Find out more on Euronews 

More News

TikTok Shop opens trade between EU and UK
Sellers from eight EU countries – including Germany, France, Italy and Spain – will be able to reach British customers via TikTok Shop from 21 September. The reverse will also be true, with UK sellers able to sell into continental Europe. One catch: there’s no TikTok fulfilment yet for UK orders. So sellers have to organise shipping and customer service themselves (“Ship by Seller”). Read more on Innels  

Ebay centralises parcel fee negotiations for sellers
Ebay is launching “Managed Shipping”, a new logistics service for private sellers and small merchants. Thin means the marketplace negotiates shipping fees centrally with carriers and collects them directly from buyers. Sellers simply receive a label with a QR code after the sale and drop the parcel off at a parcel shop – no need to navigate country-specific shipping rules. See more on Handelsblatt  

Bol widens lead over Amazon in the Netherlands
Bol has further widened its lead as the Netherlands’ largest online retailer, according to a new ECDB ranking. With 12 percent growth versus just 2.7 percent for Amazon.nl, bol is now roughly 75 percent ahead of its US rival – up from 61 percent in 2024. AliExpress climbed to third place for the first time and continues gaining market share. Get more details on Ecommerce News 

Lululemon launches Zalando-exclusive collection in Europe
Lululemon is launching a 55-piece collection exclusively via Zalando – which it calls its “biggest retail partner across Europe.” The campaign runs in core markets like Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, as well as Poland and Austria, where Lululemon only launched this week. See the full story on Fashion Network 

Allegro tests delivery service for bulky goods
Allegro is testing “Allegro XL”, a new delivery service for large and heavy products. Via Allegro Smart!, customers can add extras like delivery, unpacking, assembly and old-appliance pickup. The pilot starts in the electronics and consumer-electronics/appliances categories, before expanding to categories like home & garden and sports. Find out more on Allegro

Big Money News

Amazon places first-ever bond in British pounds
Amazon has tapped the pound bond market for the first time, raising £4.25 billion across four tranches with maturities between three and 19 years. The heavily oversubscribed issuance shows how readily investors continue to entrust the company with billions. Money likely to flow substantially into cloud and AI infrastructure, currently the industry’s biggest cost driver. Read more on Retail News 

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Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 14.09.2026 – Brussels moves against Shemu, and bol pulls ahead of Amazon erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

One Store Opens, Another Gets Shut Down

On November 5, 2025, Shein opened its first permanent store worldwide inside the Parisian department store BHV – accompanied by protesters outside the door. The same day, France’s Ministry of Economy blocked access to the Shein platform. The trigger: childlike sex dolls, along with banned weapons and medication, found on the third-party marketplace. This juxtaposition – expansion on one side, regulation on the other – runs through the entire year. A good moment, then, to pin down where France was genuinely ahead of the curve – and where its go-it-alone approach hit its limits.

Fourteen Months, Three Waves of Fines, One Court Case in Two Acts

That’s how France’s campaign against Shein has unfolded between July 2025 and September 2026 (see timeline graphic). The rhythm stands out: each wave of fines is followed by a new level of escalation – from consumer protection to data protection to criminal law, triggered by the discovery of the sex dolls in October 2025. The attempt to suspend the platform over this dragged on through two court instances and four months – and ended in defeat for the state both times.

In total, French fines against Shein now add up to more than €210 million – a scale with no real European counterpart: Italy’s competition authority AGCM imposed a greenwashing fine of just one million euros in August 2025, explicitly citing the French precedent.

Where France Deliberately Exploits Gaps in EU Law

What stands out about France isn’t just toughness. It’s how the country operates: in two instances, the state deliberately exploits gaps in EU law – something other member states rarely do.

The first case concerns the €150 million fine from France’s data protection authority, the CNIL. Under the EU’s GDPR, the one-stop-shop principle applies: only the data protection authority of a company’s EU home country may impose cross-border sanctions. In Shein’s case, that’s Ireland. Yet the CNIL based its decision on Article 82 of French data protection law, which implements the EU’s ePrivacy Directive. That directive has no one-stop-shop mechanism – any national authority can act independently. The CNIL had already successfully defended this approach against Google and Amazon in 2020 before France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’État. The Shein case follows a well-established playbook.

The second case concerns the suspension order. Shein has been designated a “Very Large Online Platform” under the Digital Services Act by the EU Commission since April 2024 – meaning oversight of systemic risks is supposed to lie exclusively with the Commission. France, however, based its lawsuit on Article 6-3 of the national digital law LCEN, which allows for swift injunctions to prevent harm. The state’s legal representative accordingly framed the claim in court with deliberate restraint. The goal wasn’t to replace the European Commission, only to prevent harm.

Marketplace Universe Insight: Legal experts classify this balancing act as a borderline case, seeing it as evidence that national law reaches its limits once systemic platform risks are at stake. Notably, the government itself admitted after its defeat before the Cour d’appel in March 2026 that the legal framework needs to evolve at both the national and European level – an unusually open acknowledgment of its own limits.

The Small-Parcel Tax: From Failed Go-It-Alone Effort to EU-Wide Blueprint

Not every measure relied on such legal gaps: on March 1, 2026, France introduced a national tax of two euros per item on parcels under €150 in value, expecting annual revenue of around €400 million. The problem: Shein and comparable platforms simply cleared their shipments through customs in other EU countries and trucked them into France afterward. According to the director general of the French customs authority, this evasion affected around 90 percent of shipments that were technically liable for the tax. In the end, only about €2.3 million came in per month, less than seven percent of the expected sum.

Since July 1, 2026, a uniform EU-wide customs duty of three euros per product category has applied, binding across all 27 member states – France’s national tax was suspended at the same time. France’s tax mainly added momentum to the implementation of the EU’s existing plans – alongside Italy and Romania, which had also introduced national fees ahead of the EU rule.

Marketplace Universe Insight: In fact, it wasn’t the success of the French tax that brought about the EU solution, but its visible failure: it supplied the argument for why EU-wide solutions are needed in such cases.

What Comes Next – And Where the EU Is Unlikely to Follow

On June 29, 2026, the French parliament passed the law to reduce the environmental impact of the textile industry. It specifically targets “ultra-fast-fashion” providers like Shein, Temu, and AliExpress, while exempting established chains like Zara or H&M. Since September 1, 2026, a tiered levy has applied. From €0.50 for underwear to €12 for coats this year, rising to €19.50 by 2030, capped at 50 percent of the net price. A separate, not yet finalized EU-wide handling fee is additionally slated for November 2026.

While the customs reform was an EU project all along, one where France mainly pushed for speed, the fast-fashion law tells a different story. International media have called it a first among major European states, but there’s no EU-wide equivalent so far. Quite the opposite – the Commission scrutinized the proposal critically for compatibility with EU law. Here, France remains on its own for now, with no sign of the EU following suit.

Does Any of This Actually Work?

An analysis by the French cashback app Joko, based on bank transaction data from 1.5 million users in France, shows a 50 percent drop in purchase volume at Temu between June and July 2026 – but only 15 percent at Shein. Joko attributes this to a warehouse Shein had already opened in Poland by late 2025, which may have reduced its tax exposure. Even though these figures should be treated with caution, France’s Ministry of Economy reported, based on its own customs data, a 30 to 40 percent drop in Chinese small parcels overall – confirming the broad trend.

Conclusion

What can be cautiously concluded from this: regulation and legal action can change things – but operators like Shein are good at finding loopholes and evading restrictions. It’s therefore still unclear whether this will lead to genuine structural shifts, and ultimately to a change in consumer behavior.

That political and public pushback can have an effect showed itself in France beyond regulation proper, too. After months of criticism over its environmental footprint and labor practices, the department store BHV announced in June 2026 that it was ending its partnership with Shein – the new management called the collaboration a “strategic mistake.” The store is expected to close by Christmas 2026.

Key Learnings

• France’s sharpest weapon is legal precision, not toughness. Both the CNIL fine (ePrivacy instead of GDPR) and the suspension order (LCEN instead of DSA) exploit structural loopholes that other member states don’t tap into in the same way.
• With more than €210 million in fines, France stands without a real European counterpart. Italy’s only comparable fine explicitly followed the French example.
• A purely national go-it-alone effort can structurally fail within the single market. The small-parcel tax was evaded 90 percent of the time before it could take effect.
• That very failure supplied the argument for an EU-wide solution that can’t be evaded. France claims to have played a driving role, but wasn’t the only one pushing for it.
• Not every instance of France being a pioneer finds an EU successor: on the fast-fashion law, France remains alone for now.

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Der Beitrag France’s Campaign Against Shein: Pioneer, Blueprint, or Go-It-Alone? erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

Shein: the IPO hype is nowhere to be found
A week after its shaky Hong Kong debut, Shein‘s stock is still trading around 17.5% below its offer price – at a valuation of $26.5 billion, barely a quarter of its 2022 peak. That raises the defining question early: can Shein grow when tariff and customs changes in the US and Europe are attacking the very pricing model that fueled its rise in the first place? Read more CNBC and Reuters (Background) 

More News

EU leaves JD’s MediaMarktSaturn takeover undecided
Brussels must rule by October 2 on whether JD.com‘s takeover of Ceconomy, MediaMarktSaturn‘s parent, gets approved, conditioned, or blocked, with the European Commission investigating whether Chinese state subsidies shaped the bid. The deal reaches further than German electronics retail alone: through Ceconomy’s stake in Fnac Darty, JD could become the second-largest electronics e-tailer in several European markets, per ECDB. Find out more on Exciting Commerce (EU) and ECDB (Background) 

EU customs rules hit cross-border sellers ahead of Q4
The EU’s new customs rules are hitting British retailers hard: alongside the €3 fee per product category, sellers face additional costs from incorrect tariff classifications, administrative overhead, and inefficient returns. From October and November, the rules tighten further with IOSS monitoring and mandatory product identifiers – just as retailers prepare for the peak season. See more on ChannelX  

eBay tightens non-payment rules
eBay now requires payment within four calendar days across Europe, with repeated non-payment triggering purchase limits or account restrictions. At the same time, sellers can send targeted best offers to interested buyers – Shop subscribers can even automate them by category or price range. Read more on Onlinehändler News 

LPP Group launches Sinsay marketplace
Poland’s LPP Group is opening its budget fashion brand Sinsay to external trading partners for the first time, turning it into a marketplace. The goal is to expand the assortment with complementary categories, growing the platform to over 100,000 products by 2027. Sinsay has so far focused on affordable fashion for the whole family and is one of LPP’s fastest-growing revenue drivers. Get more details on LPP 

CDON expands retail media within its own marketplace ecosystem
Nordic marketplace CDON Group is now integrating sponsored product advertising directly into its own platform. Instead of retrofitting a generic ad system with marketplace features, CDON opted for infrastructure built from the ground up for marketplaces, plugging directly into shoppers’ real-time purchase signals. Read more on Business Wire 

Momentum News

Live shopping catches on in the US
The U.S. live shopping market is set to reach nearly $20 billion in sales in 2026, up 35% year over year. TikTok Shop reports that live shopping sales more than doubled in the first half of 2026 versus the same period last year, with sessions up over 60% and live hours up more than 80%. Whatnot, now valued at $20 billion, generated $8 billion in sales in 2025 – the majority of which, by its own account, came from the U.S.See th full story on CNBC 

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Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 07.09. 2026 – Shein slides post-IPO, and Amazon tightens the Pan-EU FBA erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

Marketplaces in Italy 2026: A Market Still Waiting for Its Own Champions

Last updated: 07.09.2026

Market Overview

Italy’s e-commerce revenue reached €38.5 billion in 2025, according to ECDB, and is forecast to climb to €41.3 billion in 2026 — a year-over-year growth rate of 6.8%. The online share of total retail continues its steady climb, from 12.2% in 2025 to a projected 12.8% in 2026, part of a longer trajectory that ECDB expects to reach 15.2% by 2030.

Cross-border behaviour remains a defining feature of the market too: of the 15.1% of Italian e-commerce revenue that went to purchases abroad in 2025, an overwhelming 92.5% flowed to Chinese platforms — a concentration far higher than in any other major European market.

No number captures Italy’s marketplace landscape better, however, than Amazon’s own. According to ECDB, Amazon generated €25.02 billion in GMV in Italy in 2025 — a 52% share of the entire Italian e-commerce market, and growing, with GMV up 12.8% year-over-year. That’s not just a European high for Amazon; it’s the highest share Amazon holds in any of Europe’s five largest markets, ahead of Germany (39%), the UK (37%), France (27%) and Spain (20%). More than one euro in every two spent online in Italy goes through Amazon. And Amazon’s dominance is part of a broader concentration trend: the top ten online retailers in Italy now account for 93% of total market share, up sharply from 73% just two years ago in 2023.

What’s Changed? Cracks in the Amazon Wall

Compared to last year, several structural shifts stand out:

New in Fashion: Vinted and Kiabi join Zalando. Farfetch stays in the text only — still active, but weakened under Coupang.layer Shein makes less than one tenth of Amazon’s turnover. So without Amazon, there is no Italian e-commerce, basta.

YOOX’s marketplace era is over. Third-party programme shut down 10 February 2025, after three years. YOOX continues as a 1P off-price retailer only.

Kaufland arrives — placed in Sports. Live since September 2025, ~3,000 sellers, still modest traction. Placed in Sports rather than Electronics or Home & Living, since that’s the thinnest category bench.

TikTok Shop found its category. Live since March 2025, 21,000+ active sellers, strongest in Beauty. Unlike the UK (full generalist), we place it as a Beauty & Care specialist for now.

Refurbed replaces Back Market. Stronger Italian footprint: €190M+ cumulative GMV, 500,000+ products sold.

Unieuro moved to watchlist. Marketplace still not launched as of mid-2026, despite being “imminent” in last year’s edition.

TradeInn is out. Turns out to be a 1P retailer bundling own vertical brands (Bikeinn, Runnerinn), not an open marketplace.

Redcare replaces PromoFarma. Redcare has real Italian infrastructure (Milan distribution centre, own entity); PromoFarma leans on a Portuguese pharmacy licence.

No more double-listings. ManoMano now only under DIY & Garden, MediaWorld only under Electronics. Conforama and Auto-doc fill the resulting gaps.

The 2026 Quadrant in Detail

Generalists

• Amazon — still the undisputed centre of gravity of Italian e-commerce, dominant across virtually every category.
• Shein — the clear number two among generalists, its Fashion origins now firmly behind it.
• eBay — steady presence, particularly strong in cross-category and re-commerce behaviour.
• AliExpress — the reference point for price-conscious cross-border buyers.
• Temu — rapid penetration growth since 2023, part of the broader Chinese-platform dominance visible in Italy’s cross-border spending data.

Specialists by Category

Fashion & Shoes: Zalando leads, with Vinted representing the country’s thriving C2C fashion resale market and Kiabi bringing family-fashion retail-marketplace relevance.

Electronics: MediaWorld has emerged as Italy’s leading retailer-marketplace in the category since its Mirakl-powered launch in July 2024, backed by a €100 million digital investment. ePrice remains the historic Italian name in the space. Refurbed leads the recommerce segment.

Home & Living: Leroy Merlin and Maisons du Monde continue to anchor the category, joined by Conforama under its post-2024 Bricofer ownership. A note of caution on Maisons du Monde: while its Italian marketplace activity is reportedly still growing, the French parent company is fighting to avoid insolvency, having posted a €406 million net loss in 2025 and awaiting shareholder approval on a rescue financing package by 15 September 2026. Worth watching closely into next year.

DIY & Garden: ManoMano and Leroy Merlin remain the category’s backbone, joined by Auto-doc as an interesting cross-over model bridging automotive parts and DIY.

Sports: Decathlon remains the clear category leader. Zalando covers much of the sports-fashion overlap. Kaufland enters as an early-stage challenger — one to watch rather than one that has already arrived.

Beauty & Care: Douglas continues to anchor the category with its Southern European marketplace operations. Redcare brings pharmacy and parapharmacy relevance backed by real Italian infrastructure. TikTok Shop rounds out the category as its fastest-growing platform.

Market Analysis: Marketplace Universe Opinion

Italy’s marketplace story in 2026 isn’t about local platforms rising to challenge Amazon. That still hasn’t happened. What’s changed is where the challenge is coming from — and it isn’t from Italy.

This year’s biggest new entrant, Kaufland, is a German retail group extending existing European infrastructure, not a local player scaling up. Meanwhile, Italy’s most visible homegrown marketplace, YOOX, shut its third-party programme down entirely. And unlike France, where grocery giants like Carrefour and E.Leclerc run open Mirakl marketplaces, Italy’s biggest food retailers — Conad, Coop, Esselunga, Selex — still don’t open their e-commerce to outside sellers at all.

The pattern: foreign supply keeps diversifying (Kaufland, TikTok Shop, Chinese platforms), while domestic marketplace infrastructure stays flat. For brands and sellers, the takeaway is unchanged — Amazon is still the mandatory starting point, and the real decision is which of the growing pool of foreign-owned specialists deserve the next investment.

Want to add your voice?

Did we miss an emerging player, or see something differently? Help us sharpen the Quadrant for 2027!

Do you have anything to add to our country quadrant for Italy? Let us know: info@marketplace-uni.com 

Interested in a different country or a specific product category? Check out all our quadrants here: https://marketplace-universe.com/insights/quadrants/

Der Beitrag Marketplace Country Quadrant Italy 2026 erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

Amazon launches bulk storage for sellers in Europe
Amazon launched its bulk storage program Amazon Warehousing & Distribution (AWD) on August 20 in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK. Sellers can now store larger inventories with Amazon long-term, which then get automatically distributed to FBA warehouses as needed. For brands, this is a tempting cost advantage over running their own multi-country warehouses – just one that increasingly ties their logistics strategy to a single ecosystem. See more on Ecommerce News

More News

Shein eyes significantly lower IPO valuation
Shein is reportedly targeting a valuation of around $25 billion for its planned Hong Kong IPO – well below the $30 to $40 billion previously discussed. Weak growth, new tariffs, and a slide into losses in the first quarter are putting pressure on its low-cost model. Find out more on Handelsblatt

Ikea takes on Vinted and eBay
After trials in Spain and Norway, Ikea is launching its own secondhand platform in the UK this year, where Ikea Family members can buy and sell used furniture directly with each other. This turns Ikea from a manufacturer into an operator of its own secondhand market, keeping products, customers, and transactions within its own ecosystem. See more on ChannelX

Swiss online retail grows sharply in H1
Swiss retail grew 2.6 percent nominally in the first half of 2026, while online retail rose far more sharply, by 8 to 11 percent – driven mainly by leisure, sports, home & living, and consumer electronics. Notably, online fashion sales dropped 16.1 percent, which, against an otherwise stable overall market, points to a shift back toward brick-and-mortar retailers. Read more on Carpathia

JD.com: revenue decline and geopolitical headwinds
JD.com reported its first revenue decline since its 2014 IPO, while net profit rose nearly 15 percent at the same time. The drop is attributed to the expiration of state consumer subsidies. Meanwhile, China is blocking support for the EU’s review of the planned Ceconomy acquisition, a move likely to significantly complicate the process for the European Commission. See the full story on Financial Times (Revenue) and Reuters (Blockage)

Airborne News

Amazon takes off: Prime Air arrives in the UK
Amazon has officially brought its Prime Air drone delivery service to the UK – its first expansion outside the US. In parallel, Amazon plans to expand the service to 500 US cities by the end of 2026, six times more than today, with delivery times of up to 30 minutes. This turns Prime Air from a tech experiment into a serious logistics building block – and the next battle in e-commerce could increasingly be fought over delivery speed rather than price alone. Find out more on ChannelX (UK) and Amazon (USA)

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Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 24.08.2026 – Amazon’s AWD ties brands closer, and Ikea takes on Vinted and eBay erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

Marketplaces in Poland 2026: Allegro’s Fortress, and the Line Forming at the Gate

Poland’s e-commerce market keeps growing — just not quite as fast as last year, and not evenly. According to ECDB, Polish e-commerce revenue reached €28.66 billion in 2025, up 10.9% year-over-year, with growth expected to ease slightly to 8.9% in 2026, taking the market to roughly €31.2 billion. The online share of total retail sits at 6.6% in 2025, essentially flat into 2026 — a reminder that despite the headlines, Poland’s shift online is still a gradual one compared to Western Europe.

Cross-border data underlines the point. 8.9% of Polish e-commerce revenue in 2025 went to purchases made abroad — and of that, 93.7% landed on Chinese stores. AliExpress, Temu and Shein aren’t peripheral players fighting for scraps; they’re the default answer to where Poles shop once they leave the domestic market.

Our freshly updated Marketplace Country Quadrant Poland 2026 reflects this market — but with a sharper edge than in previous years, and a clearer picture of which marketplaces in Poland actually deserve a seat at the table.

What’s Changed? Correcting for Distortion

The 2025 quadrant listed five names in the Generalists box. Looking at the data again, we don’t think that box should read as a genuine peer group at all.

Exits

• Empik drops out of the Generalists box. Not because it lost relevance, but because ranking it alongside Allegro overstated the competitive reality — it moves down into three specialist boxes instead: DIY & Garden and Sports.
• Morele exits DIY & Garden and Sports, remaining only in Electronics, after losing revenue across several categories in 2025.
• eBay exits Electronics. Its role in Polish electronics trade has become marginal.

New Entries

• ERLI enters the Generalists box. ERLI is a fully Polish-owned marketplace and Polish trade press consistently calls it the country’s number two marketplace. Its 2025 GMV of 1.8 billion PLN (+45% in 2025) outsizes Empik Marketplace’s roughly 1 billion PLN. In older versions of this quadrant we had missed out on ERLI, which we have now corrected.
• Media-Expert enters Electronics. Poland’s most important electronics retailer launched its own third-party marketplace in autumn 2025.
• Home&You enters Home & Living. A dedicated interior marketplace running on Mirakl since 2021, and a sharper category fit than the generalist names that used to occupy this box.
• Hebe and Super-Pharm enter Beauty & Care. Both are established drugstore chains running confirmed third-party marketplace models — Hebe since 2022, Super-Pharm since 2024 — and a better fit for this category than the generalist names previously listed here.

Observations

Vinted does not appear in this year’s chart. By ECDB’s estimate, it’s the second-largest fashion platform in Poland by GMV, beaten only by Zalando. It stays out of the visual chart for the same structural reason as last year — our methodology centres on B2C marketplaces with professional seller relevance, and Vinted’s core model remains peer-to-peer resale — but a platform doing this much volume deserves this mention.

Douglas is not in the Beauty & Care box. It has a real offline retail footprint in Poland and runs a Mirakl-powered partner marketplace in several European markets, but we can’t confirm meaningful third-party volume specifically in Poland — so for now it’s a relevant retailer, not a marketplace entry.

The Most Important Marketplaces in Poland: The 2026 Quadrant in Detail

Generalists

• Allegro: Still the undisputed anchor of Polish e-commerce, and still the platform every other name on this list is measured against.
• Amazon: The clearest international generalist presence, though still a distant second to Allegro on home turf.
• AliExpress & Temu: The Chinese pairing that dominates the price-driven end of the market — and the direct beneficiaries of Poland’s outsized appetite for cross-border shopping abroad.
• ERLI: A fully Polish-owned marketplace built entirely on domestic capital, and consistently described in Polish trade press as the country’s number two marketplace. It also explicitly positions itself against Chinese platforms rather than alongside them, with no Chinese sellers on the platform by design.
• Kaufland: Still small next to Allegro, but growing fast and a genuinely easier entry point for Western sellers.

Specialists by Category

• Fashion & Shoes: Zalando leads on brand-driven positioning; Shein anchors the price-driven end; Polish player Modivo and its second retail destination eobuwie.pl fill up the chart.
• Electronics: Morele holds its ground; MediaMarkt remains a solid brand-driven presence; Media-Expert enters fresh off its autumn 2025 marketplace launch.
• Home & Living: Black Red White and Home&You represent the strong local front in this category, challenged by Shein.
• DIY & Garden: Leroy Merlin and Castorama remain the category’s backbone, joined now by Empik.
• Sports: Decathlon and Zalando cover the category’s poles, with Empik’s expanding third-party sports assortment earning it the third spot.
• Beauty & Care: Zalando anchors the category, joined by two specialist drugstore chains-turned-marketplaces: Hebe and Super-Pharm, both a sharper fit for Beauty & Care than the generalist names that previously filled this box. Douglas, despite its retail strength, doesn’t clear the bar on confirmed marketplace volume in Poland.

The Line Is Forming: Who’s Circling Poland

Poland’s Unique Market Dynamics

Poland spent years being treated as a market with strong local roots and limited room for outsiders. That read is now out of date. Within roughly two years, a wave of players — foreign and domestic — have either launched or announced marketplaces here, and the pattern only makes sense as what it is: the fight for the Polish consumer is now fully on.

Already live, all launched in the past 12–24 months:

Kaufland’s marketplace went live in August 2024, Castorama’s followed in January 2025, and MediaMarkt’s in May 2025 — three retailers from three different categories, each converting a closed retail operation into a third-party platform within roughly a year of each other. None of these launches happened in isolation; they’re the leading edge of the same trend the newer arrivals below are now riding. 

Not yet in the chart, but moving fast:

TikTok Shop launched in Poland on 15 June 2026, backed by InPost for logistics and BLIK for payments. It’s too early to say what this does to the category landscape — a few weeks of live data tells us nothing about whether social commerce reallocates Polish spending or just adds a channel on top. We may well be adding TikTok Shop to next year’s Generalists box.

About You launched its own marketplace in Poland in June 2026, opening with roughly 600 brands and 100,000 additional products on aboutyou.pl — Zalando diversifying its Polish exposure across two brands instead of one.

easyShop, the marketplace easyGroup is building with OnBuy, is set to launch across 21 European countries — Poland included — later in 2026. Nothing live yet, but a pure-marketplace model launching across that many markets simultaneously is not a small commitment.

The local Pushback:

Media-Expert’s own marketplace launch in autumn 2025 sits apart from this group — as Poland’s largest domestic electronics retailer, its move reads less like an outsider chasing the Polish market and more like a domestic incumbent defending its turf against exactly the kind of external pressure described here.

InPost Buy, live since March 2026 and still in its zero-commission welcome phase (through September 2026), isn’t a marketplace in the classical sense — founded by the biggest Polish logistics provider InPost, it offers no buy box and no seller commission, but focuses solely on monetisation through delivery fees instead. Around 4,000 merchants are already connected, including Modivo.

Marketplace Universe Insight: Six companies launching or preparing marketplaces in the same market within two years is not a coincidence. Poland has been identified as one of Europe’s more attractive growth opportunities precisely because it isn’t already crowded with generalists the way Germany or the UK are. Allegro’s dominance has, paradoxically, kept the field open.

Conclusion

The honest read on Poland in 2026 is that the market looks stable mostly because the challengers haven’t landed yet. Allegro’s position is not under real pressure today — but a market where TikTok Shop, About You, Castorama and MediaMarkt all show up within the same year is not a market anyone should assume stays quiet for long. For brands and sellers, the practical takeaway is this: the entry points for Poland are multiplying, and several of them (Kaufland, InPost Buy) offer meaningfully less competitive shelf space than fighting for visibility on Allegro directly. Whether that’s still true in twelve months is a different question — and one we intend to keep asking.

Key Learnings

• Allegro’s dominance is not up for debate in 2026 — it’s the TIER standard everyone else in the Generalists box has to measure up against.
• Cross-border spending is a Chinese story, full stop. 93.7% of what Poles spend abroad goes to Chinese stores — AliExpress, Temu and Shein aren’t fighting for scraps, they’re the default exit route from the domestic market.
• Watch the platforms outside the chart as closely as the ones inside it. Vinted’s GMV already outranks most listed Fashion & Shoes players; Douglas has the retail footprint but not (yet) the confirmed marketplace volume in Poland.
• Poland is no longer flying under the radar. Kaufland, Castorama and MediaMarkt all converted retail operations into marketplaces within a 12-month window — and TikTok Shop, About You, easyShop and InPost Buy have all made moves since, some live, some still ahead.
• Not every domestic marketplace launch is about growth ambition. Media-Expert’s move looks more like defense against external pressure than expansion for its own sake — a distinction worth keeping in mind as more incumbents follow suit.
• For brands weighing market entry, the timing question has changed. A year ago, Poland meant Allegro or nothing. Today there are genuinely easier, less crowded entry points — but that window won’t stay open indefinitely if this pace of new launches continues.

Want to add your voice?

Did we miss an emerging player in our analysis of marketplaces in Poland? Help us make the quadrant even more precise for 2027!

Visit our Quadrants Main Page to explore category-based and country-based analyses.

Do you have anything to add to our country quadrant for Poland? Let us know!

Der Beitrag Top Marketplaces in Poland – Marketplace Country Quadrant Poland 2026 erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.