Ready to Onboard? real.de Opens Doors to Chinese Sellers
Germany’s fastest growing online marketplace, real.de recently opened its doors to Chinese sellers. Previously a mostly German seller platform, real.de has been growing at hyper speed since its inception in 2015, with 280 hypermarkets spread across Germany’s streets and an engaged online following of 19 million monthly visitors. Now, through a recent partnership with Payoneer, real.de hopes to grow its network of over 5,000 German sellers cross-border, through the onboarding of international (CH-based) sellers.
Rise to the Top
real.de’s journey started in 2015, under the umbrella of the real hypermarket group. The group’s acquisition of Hitmeister – a fast growing German marketplace – in 2016, marked its foray from brick-and-mortar to digital. At this point, real.de made a decisive step to expand its online presence and nurture a fully open marketplace. Since the acquisition, real.de’s rise to the top has been impressively quick: In 4 years, real.de managed to grow at a rate of 128%, securing its spot as Germany’s third largest marketplace.
Unique Benefits
real.de is exclusively focused on the German market. What this means, for potential sellers, is an early stage opportunity to secure market share in Europe’s second largest economy (after Russia), forecast to be valued at €57.8 billion by the end of 2019. The platform offers a unique combination of customer and merchant benefits. For merchants, these include:
- Competitive commissions ranging from 12.5% for most categories to 6.5% for electronics (competition charges 15%)
- Personal merchant support in Chinese, German, and English
- Marketing services that include consulting on SEA, SEO, and display marketing, and promotion through newsletters, social media, a loyalty program, and offline media
On the customer end, German consumers are attracted to the marketplace due to the following:
- A rich product offering, which covers over 15 million products in 5000 categories – the most popular categories being electronics, home, garden & DIY products
- Leveraging of offline stores for service & product pickup
- An attractive loyalty program (Germany’s biggest!)
- The availability of payment in installations
- Top-notch customer service
Mastering O2O
If there is one thing that real.de is a master of, it is offline-to-online commerce. real.de knows how to leverage its network of offline stores throughout Germany to better serve online shoppers. This led them to establish the first O2O marketplace in Germany that engages with customers through multiple channels. “We’ve noticed a continuous shift in customer behavior, which resulted in a more diverse set of contact points. This led us to build a platform that would serve our customers through all channels. What came out of it is a platform where sellers and customers can meet independent of their location or preferred channel,” says Sebastian Rötsch, Director of Corporate Development at real.de. Through this strategy, real.de engages customers through both its online marketplace, and its physical stores – creating an all-around shopping experience that keeps consumers engaged and coming back for more.
Start Selling on real.de!
Now that real.de has mastered its foray from offline to online, it’s ready to take a new domestic-to-international leap, by opening up its doors to Chinese sellers. “The cooperation with Chinese sellers is a great opportunity for our marketplace. It enables us to add exciting new products to the real.de assortment and thus offer our customers a wider range of products at attractive prices,” says Doreen Schumm, Head of Marketplace Sales and Key Account Management.
Want to be a part of real.de’s seller ecosystem? Onboarding is simple. Follow this link, and register for a seller account as prompted. Following completion, real.de’s merchant team will verify your profile and activate your account within 1-2 business days.
Start Selling on real.de Today!
Partnering with Payoneer
At Payoneer, we make it our mission to empower businesses to go beyond – beyond borders, limits, and expectations. What this means in the context of eCommerce marketplaces, is that we leverage our robust technology, compliance, operations, and banking infrastructure, to deliver a suite of services that includes cross-border payments, working capital, tax solutions and risk management. Beyond that, we support the growth of clients through relevant introductions to our vast network of thousands of sellers based across the globe in China, India, the UK, and more.
“Partnering with Payoneer has given us the opportunity to accelerate our growth even further,” says Claudia Bolten, Managing Director at real.de. “The Green Channel program and international infrastructure seamlessly support our sellers in reaching their goals.”