June 09, 2022 Industry news
Fruugo is a highly diversified online marketplace that supports e-commerce transactions in 28 languages, 31 currencies and 42 countries across the globe. Helping new retailers grow their business through international sales, Fruugo mitigates the complexities of cross border trade by providing an end-to-end eCommerce solution spanning demand generation through to order orchestration and customer service.
As the demand for online shopping continues to and the globalisation of retail is accelerating by the day, online marketplaces such as Fruugo present huge growth opportunities for brands and retailers of all sizes.
Opportunities overseas
This is reflected in Fruugo’s recent growth. The company recently announced a 57% increase in revenue year on year and an increase of more than 220% on a two-year basis. Fruugo Group websites have received over 240 million visits over the past financial year generating over 3.2 million orders, 91% of which were cross-border transactions.
These impressive figures and the high proportion of sales to customers overseas, highlights the incredible export opportunities online marketplaces offer to businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Online marketplaces represent a great channel to test and expand into international territories as they already have large customer bases in place. Many also provide a variety of tools, features and resources to make selling products overseas much easier.
Fruugo for example, uses sophisticated data analytics to capture the growing proportion of consumers using online search engines to shop internationally, delivering them directly to fully localised product pages in their own languages and currencies.
With cross border e-commerce expanding rapidly, both conventional retailers and direct to consumer sellers located all over the world are seeking ways to reach global shoppers."
Dominic Allonby
Executive chairman of Fruugo
Just like Amazon, eBay, and Rakuten, Fruugo is not dependent on any particular geography or product category. By combining retailer data with agile technology and digital marketing expertise that matches product supply with consumer demand, Fruugo is able to connect consumers around the world with stocked products at the moment of their search.
This significantly reduces the friction, time and cost normally associated with cross-border trade, allowing sellers to concentrate on shipping the orders that generated for them.
Selling internationally
At GS1 UK, we work with many of the leading online marketplaces, to help our members grow their businesses.
A simple way to start selling internationally is to add international postage options to your marketplace listings, immediately making your products accessible to customers ordering from overseas.
However, the real prize is actively listing on international marketplaces such as Fruugo. This can generate up to eight times as much revenue as simply making a domestic listing available for international shipping.
When you create your listing, always remember to ensure your barcodes are in order can make sure you consider the costs and times involved in sending your items internationally before updating your listing information accordingly.
The power of data
For businesses of any size, one of the first steps to trading, both online and offline, is assigning unique identifiers to your products in the form of Global Trade Item Numbers (or GTINs for short).
The real strength of sourcing a GTIN from GS1 is that it is truly global, meaning that it can be easily used to sell products all over the world.
These powerful numbers help to ensure seamless sales transactions across borders and the clear, accurate product data they capture is essential for providing consumers with the best possible shopping experience, especially in an online environment.
Over the past two years, the number of products listed on online marketplaces has risen dramatically and online searches rely heavily on GTINs to match all these products, and help consumers find the specific products that meet their needs.
GTINs help the likes of Fruugo unambiguously identify products as unique, differentiate them from similar ones, and connect consumers to useful content such as reviews, videos and more.
This is why alongside Google, many online marketplaces have made GTINs a requirement for selling on their platforms.
Google relies on accurate and trusted product data to precisely identify products that are available for shoppers. We recommend providing clear product identification, as this helps Google to match offers to products, and to match products to relevant search queries. You can improve Google’s understanding of products by using unique product identifiers like Global Trade Item Number (GTIN™), Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPNs), and brand names.”
March 2021
Going global
With over 90% of Fruugo’s revenue generated from shoppers outside the UK and 82% of all transactions being cross-currency, their recent success provides clear evidence of the huge opportunities online marketplaces present to brands in search of international growth.
With the growth of cross border e-commerce showing no signs of slowing, both conventional retailers and direct to consumer sellers from all over the world are seeking new ways to reach global shoppers.
The enormous international reach and innovative trading solutions offered by online marketplaces such as Fruugo enable sellers to do just that.
By combining accurate product data and global unique identifiers in international listings, brands of all shapes and sizes can continuously tap into global demand for sought after products and categories, without being exposed to supply chain headaches.
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