Russia’s manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers can now experiment with online sales without investing in their own IT, payment, fulfillment or even online marketing capacities. A new specially-designed platform called TetraMall was launched last month to offer such clients a complete set of services for starting e-commerce activities “quickly and successfully.”
The St. Petersburg-based company claims that its platform syncs data on stock unit price and availability from numerous warehouses, displaying them in real time to online shoppers. Customers may even pre-order an item that is temporarily unavailable in the warehouses.
In addition to managing all payment, delivery and call center operations, TetraMall guarantees the transactions as well as product return if purchasers use its delivery service. TetraMall requires consumers to pre-pay their order – a rather unusual approach to selling physical goods in Russia’s e-commerce market.
“TetraMall serves as an agent who manages retail operations and shares revenues with the manufacturers,” company co-founder Stanislav Svarichevsky told East-West Digital News.
“Our system requires no investment from companies, and it may become a vital instrument to a number of offline players in Russia. Competition has become so intense in the offline world that the very survival of some categories of players is at stake – as can be seen, for example, in the car tire industry,” he added.
With its business model based on commissions from each completed transaction, TetraMall claims it already serves several hundred companies.
New funding for new markets
After investing €4 million in the project in 2011 – an investment not made public at the time – Svarichevsky and partner Anton Zeilinger developed the platform for almost two years, with a beta version launched in September 2012. The company plans to launch nationwide promotion campaigns later this year and ultimately expand internationally.
Svarichevsky told East-West Digital News that his company is “planning to raise another round of funding to accelerate penetration of the Russian market and expansion to such new markets as China and Europe.”
“As soon as we validate the technology and the functionalities, taking into account our customers’ needs, we will start international expansion,” he concluded.
Among other e-commerce enablers in Russia are subsidiaries of the KupiVip, Otto Group and Ozon, each offering particular characteristics. Manufacturers and wholesalers may also sell their products through such marketplaces as Molotok.ru, Tiu.ru, [email protected], Wikimart.ru and Yandex Market. Some of these offer payment and fulfillment services beyond their online catalog function, but do not check product availability.
- RUSSIAN E-COMMERCE REPORT – The total volume of Russian online retail reached approximately $13 billion in 2012, up 25% from the previous year, not including cross border sales. EWDN, in partnership with leading universities and consultancies, has published an in-depth research on this industry, including an analysis of online marketplaces. To receive free insights or to order the full version (2013 edition), please contact us at [email protected].
