Only few Russian online retailers sell outside their home market and neighbouring Russian-speaking countries. One of them is market leader Wildberries, which has just started sales in Israel.
Local customers can order products through an English language online store, as well as through mobile apps on iOS and Android, reports industry news site e-pepper.ru. The site features about 5 million items from 39,000 brands: women’s, men’s and children’s clothing, footwear and accessories — which are the main focus of Wildberries — as well as beauty products, toys, electronics and household appliances, books, sporting goods, pet supplies, home and garden goods.
Wildberries started its international expansion with several countries of the former Soviet Union. The site currently serves Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as well as Ukraine, where it launched operations this past September via its Polish subsidiary.
Outside this area, the company operates in Poland (since January 2020) and Slovakia (since May 2020). Wildberries also eyes Western European markets, but no concrete steps in these countries were announced yet.
In a recent TV interview, Wildberries founder Tatyana Bakalchuk said that her company’s sales outside Russia amounted to some 13 billion rubles in the first half of 2020 (nearly $180 million at that time), and that half of these goods were made in Russia.
More than 24,000 Russian entrepreneurs and companies are involved in these international sales, according to Wildberries Development Director Vyacheslav Ivashchenko.
Bakalchuk was a school teacher in 2004 when she founded Wildberries with her husband Vyacheslav. She is now Russia’s wealthiest woman.
