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 

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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.

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.

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.

PDD misses estimates, Temu responds with local infrastructure
PDD Holdings, parent company of Pinduoduo and Temu, missed market expectations in the second quarter: revenue rose 8% to $15.7bn but fell short of the analyst estimate of around $16.26bn. Net income fell 12% to around $3.80bn, weighed down by intensifying competition in China as well as US tariffs, the loss of duty-free treatment, and new EU small-parcel fees. In response, Temu is expanding its local fulfillment infrastructure and onboarding more local merchants to adapt to the new EU regulation. See the full story on Reuters and ChannelX

More News

Marks & Spencer and Zalando scale up partnership
Marks & Spencer is extending its logistics partnership with ZEOS, Zalando’s B2B fulfillment division, to 22 European markets – newly including France, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain. ZEOS handles order fulfillment through its own distribution network, with M&S expecting shorter delivery times and up to 58% lower delivery costs as a result. See more on Yahoo Finance

Amazon makes discounts more transparent
Amazon is rolling out a “Price History” button in Germany: via its AI assistant Rufus, shoppers can check a product’s price trend over up to a year. This exposes deals based on outdated list prices and puts sellers under greater pressure around promotions. Read more on Futurezone 

Chronext isn’t insolvent after all
Swiss-based luxury watch retailer Chronext, founded in 2013, filed for bankruptcy this week – but only for its Swiss holding structure, Chronext AG and Chronext Group AG. The operating business is unaffected and continues to run unchanged through Chronext GmbH in Cologne. Find out more on Tagblatt 

Bonprix expands partner business
Otto subsidiary Bonprix is now also selling its fashion via Deichmann, expanding its network of external sales channels alongside Otto and About You. For Bonprix, this means additional reach and access to new customer groups. See more on Retail News

Robot News

Amazon tests fully automated delivery stations
With “Project Tetromino,” Amazon is working on delivery stations where AI and robots also take over sorting and loading packages – initial pilots are planned for as early as 2028 under an internal plan, initially in the US. Amazon stresses this is still an early-stage concept. Get more details on Business Insider 

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Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 31.08.2026 – PDD misses estimates, and M&S bets on Zalando 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.

The Loss Nobody Should Be Talking About

Three years, two failed listing attempts, and 463 pages later, Shein finally put real numbers on the table. On July 26, the fast-fashion group filed its draft Hong Kong IPO prospectus, targeting a $40-50 billion valuation – down from $98.2 billion at its 2022 peak.

The headline that traveled fastest: a $99 million net loss in Q1 2026, versus a $395 million profit a year earlier.

It’s also the headline that matters least. Several industry analysts who read the filing line by line independently arrived at the same read: the loss is a non-cash accounting effect from a fair-value adjustment on convertible preferred shares ahead of listing. Strip that line out, and the quarter was operationally profitable.

As China Commerce expert Ed Sander put it: “the net loss was caused by devaluation of shares, not bad business.”

What the Loss Is Hiding: A Shrinking Basket and a Growing Marketplace

The number that deserved the headline barely made most coverage: revenue growth collapsed from 41% (2023) to 21% (2024) to 8% (2025) – and to just 1.1% in Q1 2026.

Behind that deceleration sits a quieter shift. Active customers and total orders kept climbing every year; revenue didn’t keep pace. Divide net revenue by orders, and average order value has fallen for three straight years.

The Numbers Behind the Squeeze:

Purchase frequency is stable. Customers aren’t leaving and aren’t buying less often–  they’re spending less per order, three years running. Source: Shein’s Hong Kong IPO prospectus

This is the pattern Ed Sander flagged first: loyalty holds, but each visit brings home less value. Given Shein had to raise some US prices after the de minimis exemption disappeared, a rising AOV would have been the expected response. Instead it kept falling – the clearest sign yet that Shein is losing wallet share elsewhere, right as its own costs climb.

But behind this interesting number hides another one. Shein’s own filing explains that a marketplace order only shows up in revenue as a commission, not as the full price the customer paid – so as more orders shift to the marketplace model, average revenue per order mechanically falls even if customers are spending exactly the same. The AOV drop is real, but it’s a mix of shoppers trading down and Shein simply booking less of each marketplace sale as its own revenue. We’ll come back to that further down.

Shein Blames Tariffs. The Timeline Says Otherwise.

Shein’s own prospectus points to trade policy as the central threat: the end of the US de minimis exemption in May 2025, and the EU’s removal of its €150 duty-free threshold plus a new €3 handling fee. Most coverage has followed that framing.

But the timeline doesn’t cooperate. Operating margin was 4.3% in 2023, dropped sharply to 2.5% in 2024. That’s a full year before any tariff changed – then recovered to 4.1% in 2025, the year the US shock actually landed. If tariffs were the main wound, the dates run backwards.

The analysts of Momentum Works, who have read the full filing, points to a different 2024 event instead: Temu overtook Shein in estimated global GMV that year, competing for the same scarce inputs – consumer wallet share, ad inventory on Meta and Google, third-party air freight out of southern China, and warehouse capacity abroad. That’s a fight over resources, not a customs bill.

“That, not the tariff headlines, is the clock worth watching,” Momentum Works wrote of the pressure building since 2024.

German e-commerce analyst Alexander Graf’s read lands close to the same place, though with a different conclusion: he still sees the underlying model as sound. “Peak Shein is far from reached,” he argued in his own breakdown of the filing – pointing to Shein’s ability to – offset a shrinking US share elsewhere, and to the fast-growing, higher-margin marketplace business as the real story the deceleration obscures.

Europe Is Where the Next Round Gets Decided

Europe isn’t just catching up to the US shock – it’s already Shein’s bigger Western market, and has been since before the shock even started. In every single reported period, Europe’s revenue has outpaced the US: $10.2 billion versus $9.5 billion in 2023, widening to $14.8 billion versus $10.1 billion by 2025 – a lead of roughly 46%. Even in Q1 2026, Europe held a $2.9 billion to $2.0 billion advantage. That reframes the whole EU tariff story: this isn’t regulation catching up with a secondary market, it’s hitting the region that already generates more Shein revenue than the United States does. 

The bloc removed its €150 duty-free threshold and introduced a €3 handling fee on July 1, 2026 – weeks before this prospectus was filed. Shein itself flags that the European impact could match or exceed what it saw in the US.

Unlike in the US, Shein’s European warehouse footprint has centered on a single major hub in Belgium – a thinner buffer than the multi-site US network. But Shein isn’t starting from zero: it has already opened a Polish logistics hub this year, built explicitly to support local marketplace sellers, and is recruiting third-party retailers across the continent – more than  600 in Germany alone, plus a partnership with the Madrid Chamber of Commerce to bring Spanish businesses onto the platform. The US playbook – localize, clear in bulk, absorb the shock through infrastructure rather than price alone – is being rolled out in Europe in parallel with the new fee, not after it.

Shein’s Marketplace Is the Real Growth Engine Now 

Between the loss headline and the tariff story, the actual pivot in this prospectus goes almost unmentioned: service revenue – Shein’s cut from third-party marketplace sellers and its Xcelerator brand program – has grown from 2.7% of net revenue in 2023 to 14.3% by early 2026.

That means: Shein’s marketplace is also already bigger than most people assume. The filing discloses that marketplace commissions generally run 10% to 20% of transaction value. Even after setting aside a meaningful chunk of that $4.7 billion service-revenue line for fulfillment fees rather than pure commission, and applying Shein’s own disclosed rate to what’s left, a conservative estimate puts marketplace GMV somewhere between $20 billion and $30 billion for 2025 alone – equivalent to more than 60% of the size of Shein’s entire $37.1 billion product business. Shein doesn’t publish that GMV figure itself, which, in a filing that discloses almost everything else, is a choice worth noting.

Marketplace Universe Insight: Shein doesn’t disclose marketplace margin directly, but the direction is clear: brand-enablement and service revenue reportedly runs at roughly double the group’s overall operating margin, since Shein collects a commission without carrying inventory risk. An Xcelerator partner brand, per the filing, can grow revenue 15-fold in its second year on the platform while lifting its own operating margin by more than 30 percentage points. Partner brands already on board include Everlane and Missguided; in Germany alone, Shein counts more than 600 local sales partners.

That’s the quiet logic behind the German seller drive and the Polish logistics hub: every local retailer Shein signs up adds revenue without adding a unit to its own cost-of-sales line.

Our Take: Shein’s Marketplace Is Already the Story 

Reading this prospectus as a referendum on whether Shein is in trouble misses the more useful question. The growth numbers are weak – a business decelerating from +41% to roughly +1% in three years doesn’t get to wave that away, IPO bookkeeping effects or not. But the number that matters most isn’t in any headline: Shein’s marketplace, on our own conservative estimate, already moves $20–30 billion in GMV – more than 60% the size of its entire product business, and a figure Shein doesn’t publish itself. That’s not a side project anymore. That’s close to a second Shein, running quietly inside the first one.

This is also the real answer to the tariff question. The pressure isn’t customs officers – it’s Temu, and it started a year before anyone blamed a tariff. Shein can’t out-cheap Temu in the segment that made it famous, and its own numbers show it isn’t trying to: the fastest-growing, best-margin part of the business is the marketplace, and it’s already large enough to matter more than the core catalog’s next percentage point of growth. Expect Shein to push upmarket into mid-price territory less through its own product line and more by recruiting the local retailers who already own that positioning – in Germany, in Spain, and wherever else in Europe.

So what we see here is a marketplace that’s already bigger than most of the industry assumed, quietly built and about to get a lot more visible. The fight for European retail’s middle ground won’t be won with cheaper t-shirts. It’ll be won with sign-up forms for local sellers – and Shein is already ahead on collecting them.

Key Learnings

• The Shein IPO’s Q1 2026 net loss is a non-cash accounting artefact tied to preferred-share revaluation, not operational distress – but the growth deceleration to 1.1% is real.
• Average order value has fallen for three consecutive years (~$45 to ~$39) while purchase frequency stayed flat – shrinking wallet share, but partly a bookkeeping effect of the marketplace model too.
• The timing of the 2024 margin squeeze, before any tariff change, points to Temu as the more likely root cause than the trade policy Shein cites in its own filing.
• Europe’s version of the US shock is only weeks old; Shein is already building matching infrastructure and recruiting local sellers rather than waiting to react.
• Service and marketplace revenue, not the core fashion business, is Shein’s fastest-growing, highest-margin segment – up from 2.7% to 14.3% of net revenue in three years.
• Back-calculated from Shein’s own disclosed commission range, marketplace GMV is conservatively in the $20–30 billion range for 2025 – already more than 60% the size of Shein’s own product business, and a figure Shein itself doesn’t publish.
• The next competitive battle in European fast fashion is likely to be fought over local seller partnerships, not price.

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Der Beitrag Shein Marketplace: The Business Hiding Inside the IPO Numbers erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.

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Der Beitrag Marketplace Universe News 06.07.2026 – France bans fast-fashion ads, and JD.com’s takeover plans get greenlit erschien zuerst auf Marketplace Universe.