Russian digital shopping app JOOM targets France in challenge to Amazon

The e-commerce marketplace JOOM, whose mobile shopping app sells products from China at cut-rate prices directly to buyers, is recruiting French brands to bolster its merchant roster in a market it sees as key to cracking Europe and taking on Amazon. 

Launched in 2016, the Russia-based company currently offers some 10 million mostly chinese-made products ranging from cell phones to sneakers to customers around the world. It targets $1 billion in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) this year, as its CEO and co-founder Ilya Shirokov told Reuters in January.

JOOM already offers 10,000 products from France and sees the home of haute-couture fashion as a testing ground for scaling up sales of higher-value items made outside of China, with French consumers among its most active in Europe. 

“The next step will be helping French merchants sell their products in Europe” JOOM CEO and co-founder Ilya Shirokov told Reuters in Paris. “Then we will target merchants in other European countries.”