The e-commerce properties of the KupiVIP holding — which include, in particular, fashion flash sales sites Kupivip.ru and Kupiluxe.ru as well as e-store ShopTime.ru — will be merged into a unique portal under the KupiVIP brand, the company’s general manager Vladimir Kholyaznikov told the Russian business daily Kommersant.
The move is intended to consolidate the group’s audience and to “simplify the group’s infrastructure,” which could entail a cost decrease of 10%, according to Kholyaznikov.
Starting from next week, all the group’s secondary projects will be presented on dedicated sections of the flagman site, Kupivip.ru. The platform will thus display no less than “2,000 brands from all of the market.”
KupiVIP’s assortment is also being enriched by the offers of online retailers from Germany as well as Italy, France, the USA, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Azerbaijan. This cross-border dimension is coming after KupiVIP and some other domestic players failed in their lobbying against the penetration of foreign e-commerce companies on the Russian market, most of whose sales to Russian consumers are tax-free. The cross-border segment of Russian e-commerce reached up to $3 billion in 2013, up 75% from 2012.
The KupiVIP holding, which also includes a business unit for B2B services, does not disclose its figures. According to the East-West Digital News expert pool, the group generated last year $192 million of B2C sales, including some $170 million from the Kupivip.ru website. The company expects to become profitable in 2015, Kholyaznikov told Kommersant.
- East-West Digital News publishes research studies on the Russian e-commerce market, including its cross-border dimension. To receive an executive summary at no charge, please contact us at [email protected].
