The big guys don't share: how marketplaces are gradually cutting off partners' profits
- Tatyana Romanova Forbes editorial staff
Copy link
Photo by Mikhail Grebenshchikov/RBC/TASS Owners of pick-up points are earning less and less from their business, as the largest marketplaces are systematically changing the rules of interaction for the worse for partners. Experts and market participants interviewed by Forbes believe that the good conditions of previous years were only a bait allowing e-com giants to increase their coverage across the country, and that pick-up points of the main players will never be such a profitable business as before
The largest Russian marketplaces—Wildberries, Ozon, and Yandex Market—over the past two years have significantly tightened the operating conditions for partner pick-up points (POPs). The Association of Electronic Commerce Market Participants (AUREC) came to this conclusion, and this was confirmed by Forbes’ interlocutors. Until recently, marketplaces were actively expanding their pick-up point networks, attracting partners with subsidies for starting a business and increased interest rates for work, but now that the networks of the main players have already been built, pick-up points will earn less and less.
Raised by a pandemic
In March 2020, the owner of the largest Russian marketplace Wildberries, Tatyana Bakalchuk, recorded an appeal to the company's clients and “to all residents of our country,” urging them to stay at home. She said that online retailers are ready to bring all the necessary goods. It is 2020 that is considered a new starting point in the development of the domestic e-commerce market, when the lockdown sharply increased the popularity of delivery services, marketplaces and other online stores, and the rapidly expanding network of pick-up points became the backbone of this new shopping industry.
According to Data Insight, in 2020 the volume of the marketplace market amounted to 721 billion rubles, in 2023 – already 4.4 trillion rubles. Geography and infrastructure also expanded. According to Data Insight estimates, in 2020 there were 46,000 order pick-up points in Russia, and today there are more than 100,000 of them, Fedor Virin, a partner at the analytical company Data Insight, calculated at the request of Forbes. General Director of INFOLine-Analytics Mikhail Burmistrov estimates the number of pickup points even more optimistically: in his opinion, there are about 150,000 of them in the country.
Material on the topic
According to the 2GIS service, in January 2022, there were 17,680 points for issuing online orders in cities with a population of over a million. Over the next 2.5 years, their number in the largest cities of Russia increased by 113%.
Cooperation with partners and franchisees is beneficial, as the marketplaces themselves admit. According to an Ozon representative, this strategy allows “to quickly expand the geography of service, since partners can open pickup points in various regions, including remote and sparsely populated areas, and work more effectively with landlords and local staff.” < /p>
“We began developing the partnership and franchise network of pick-up points in 2020,” recalls a Wildberries representative. — Now the total number of Wildberries distribution points is 42,000 in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, 28,000 of them belong to our partners. We plan that by the end of the year the total number of partner and franchise Wildberries pickup points will reach 35,000.”
“One thing can be said with certainty: after the pandemic, self-pickup quickly became the most popular way to receive parcels from all categories of buyers throughout Russia,” sums up Alexander Efimov, chairman of the AUREK board. According to him, all marketplaces understood that they needed to grow networks faster than competitors, to get “their clients,” so they tried to “invite partners with chocolate conditions.” Marketplaces offered partners hundreds of thousands of rubles as subsidies for opening points, all kinds of support chats, a personal manager and attractive working conditions, for example, increased percentages of turnover, from which the main earnings of the pickup point are formed.
Forbes Telegram channel. Russia Channel about business, finance, economics and lifestyle Subscribe
Dramas Wildberries
The massive opening of Wildberries partner pickup points occurred in 2021, Forbes interlocutors say. “Then the marketplace began to conduct a rather aggressive advertising campaign to attract partners,” recalls the owner of several pick-up points of the marketplace. — On the website and in the Wildberries application, he offered to become the owner of a pickup point and open points; those who wanted were promised a subsidy for opening a pickup point in the amount of 300,000 rubles; they had to work for 6.5% of the point’s turnover. There were no particular restrictions or fines – just open, and more.”
The situation changed literally a year later. “Wildberries started tightening the screws on its partners around the summer of 2022,” says another pickup point owner. “First, the pickup point introduced a rating system: customers were asked to rate the point’s work on a five-star scale, and a fine was imposed for a rating below 4.98. The calculation was based on a special formula, and the fine could reach 20% of the reward.”
Then, various kinds of innovations that reduced the profit of the pick-up plant began to appear one after another, Forbes’ interlocutors say. A couple of months later, liability for defects was added to the existing fines; money was collected specifically from the owners of the distribution points. In the fall of 2022, penalties were added for the speed of goods acceptance. It was necessary to accept one delivery of goods in 90 minutes (the number of articles was not regulated). The introduced measure took up to 20% of the daily remuneration, interviewed partners complain.
In the fall of 2023, a differentiated tariff was introduced for partners. This caused a wave of protests and led to a real riot, when about 60 indignant entrepreneurs gathered near the company’s office near the Demidov business center on Timur Frunze Street in Moscow. In February 2023, the company introduced a penalty for the buyer substituting goods when returning them. The pickup point also had to be responsible for this, and 100% of the cost of the item was required to be reimbursed.
Material on the topic
The owners of pick-up stations surveyed by Forbes believe that out of 100% of earnings, fines now take at least 20%. Efimov from AUREK notes that the marketplace managed to benefit from the fines. The company's reports for 2022 indicate that the marketplace earned 8.4 billion rubles from fines, and in the reports for 2023 this amount increased to 14.8 billion rubles.
Not only were fines affecting profits; the base rate for work also changed. As the owners of the pickup point told Forbes, if previously the partners of the marketplace opened a pickup point based on a monthly payment of approximately 6% of the point’s turnover, now Wildberries has introduced differentiation by region and reduced the point’s income to about 2% of the turnover. Forbes got acquainted with the tariff schedule. As follows from the document, when opening a pickup point in the Altai Territory, a Wildberries partner with a point turnover of 1-5 million rubles can count on a remuneration of 2.01% of the turnover; as the turnover increases to 14 million rubles, the remuneration is reduced to 1.2%. In Buryatia, this range is 2.36% and 1.21%, in Crimea – 2.11% and 1.20%. In one of the wealthiest regions – the Moscow region – the fork ranges from 3.33% to 1.73% of turnover.
How much do the owners of a pick-up point earn? “At the beginning of 2021-2022, it was possible to earn 200,000-250,000 rubles per month from one pickup point,” says the owner of a large network of pickup points. — Now it comes out to a little more than 250,000-280,000 rubles, but this does not take into account deductions. If we subtract fines and lead to inflation, it turns out that we began to earn less in 2021 prices – 190,000-200,000 rubles per pick-up point.”
“They lured us, and now they're reaching into our pockets,” says the owner of a pick-up point chain in one of Russia's central districts. “When I opened the pick-up point several years ago, the tariff was 6% of turnover. Now we can just close down; it's not profitable for me to work at the new tariffs.”
“We conducted a survey among more than 1,000 owners of Wildberries pick-up points throughout Russia. They indicated that the percentage of remuneration for the period July 2022 – January 2024 on average decreased by half, from 4.5-5% to 2-2.5%, and the average amount of deductions is about 40,000-50,000 rubles per month,” says Efimov from AUREK.
Representatives of Wildberries did not answer Forbes’ questions in detail. “The income of a pickup point depends on the volume of goods passing through it. On average, one point brings the owner about 2.1 million rubles a year. To support the business of our partners, we regularly introduce bonuses for pickup points that open in busy areas. We can, for example, pay a subsidy or give away a branded sign,” the marketplace said in a written response.
Material on the topic
Laconic Ozon
The main backbone of the Ozon pickup point was also formed in 2020-2021, say the marketplace partners.
“As cooperation with partners developed, the conditions changed: from fixed rates (50-70-90 rubles) to a percentage reward,” says an Ozon representative. “At the start, the marketplace paid a reward of 4.4% of the turnover of issued orders. Today, partners receive 5% of the turnover of issued orders, but no more than 250 rubles for each product, and also earn money on processing returns, issuing cards from our bank or Ozon fresh orders.”
“Ozon has always attracted the attention of the laconicism of its requirements,” notes the owner of five distribution points. — In 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, I opened the first point. The cooperation was attractive: for the first three months they paid double the turnover rate (8.8%), and provided free signage, plates, stickers and other marketing materials.”
Gradually, conditions changed for the worse, assure Marketplace partners. First, the so-called “protection zone” was cut. There was a ban on opening new pick-up points within a 15-minute walking distance from the existing one, but in In December 2022, Ozon presented new conditions to its partners – the security zone will be reduced to two to three minutes. “Later it turned out that we were talking about the territory of “one point – one house.” And for many this became a real disaster. People sat across the street [from the existing pick-up point], and neither of them earned anything. The partners were extremely dissatisfied, they worked to zero, only the owner of the premises benefited,” complains the owner of several pick-up points of the marketplace.
The situation worsened in March 2024, when the marketplace announced the introduction of a service fee for partners from April 1. Previously, the point’s income was 5% of its turnover without any deductions. But starting in April, pick-up stations with a turnover of more than 2.2 million rubles per month received a differentiated fee rate (if the turnover is less than 2.2 million, the fee is a symbolic one ruble per month). When calculating the service fee, the population density in the city where the point is located, the average rental costs and the turnover of the point are taken into account. Special turnover thresholds were introduced for Moscow – 7 million rubles, Moscow region – 4 million rubles, St. Petersburg – 5 million rubles, 4 million rubles – for the Leningrad region. If the turnover of the pickup point is below the specified amounts, the fee will be symbolic – still one ruble per month.
“I have a large pickup point in St. Petersburg, its turnover in February amounted to 13 million rubles, my revenue is 650,000 rubles, from April I will receive 146,000 less (-23%),” another Ozon partner calculated.
Material on the topic
The average national income of one Ozon pickup point is estimated by its partners at 130,000-180,000 rubles per month, excluding the cost of renting premises. In the Moscow region, the income in new residential complexes is about 180,000 rubles per month, with 70,000 spent on rent, 70,000 on salaries and 15,000 on operating expenses.
Partners began to receive higher rewards from the marketplace, an Ozon representative assures. This is due to the fact that previously the flow of orders was several times lower, and the average turnover per outlet a year ago was 30% lower. “Young outlets in promising locations (where there are few Ozon outlets) have been receiving financial support for the first six months of operation since 2022; today it reaches up to 500,000 rubles per month,” says a representative of the marketplace. — The company recently launched a service fee, which does not apply to newcomers and those who continue to open new locations; for such partners it is symbolic, one ruble. Partners earn a percentage of turnover – 5% of the point’s turnover; for expensive goods (from 5,000 rubles) the reward is 250 rubles.”
“According to an AUREK survey, almost two-thirds of the owners of Ozon pick-up points showed an increase in turnover by April last year (by an average of 160%), while on average, monetary remuneration as a percentage of turnover increased by 8% (from 5.18 to 5.59% ), which corresponds to the level of inflation (inflation growth in Russia in 2023 was 7.42% according to Rosstat), calculated Efimov from AUREK. — Taking into account the introduced service fee (on average 22% of remuneration), the final remuneration decreased by 9.45% compared to April 2023. In comparison with the contractual terms of April 2023, with the current turnover and taking into account the service fee, the surveyed pickup points have lost income in the form of remuneration in the amount of up to 133,700 rubles (on average 38,280 rubles), which, as a percentage of the remuneration currently received, means a deterioration in conditions of approximately by 9.5% (without taking into account inflation), and taking into account inflation – by all 16.87%.”
Sudden “Yandex Market”
Yandex Market began developing its pick-up point network in 2020, and now it has 13,000 locations, says a representative of the marketplace’s press service. The online platform has only three of its own points, the rest are managed by partners. “The terms of cooperation with partners are regulated by the offer. For example, it sets out the types of additional services that can be provided to partners at the pickup point,” says the representative. — In the fall of 2023, the Marketa pickup point became able to send and receive orders made on Avito.”
“The marketplace began actively offering franchises a year and a half ago. Their turnover, of course, was modest, but they gave high interest rates and there was minimal competition,” says Pavel Chatulov, co-owner of the company, which owns more than a hundred operating Yandex Market pickup points in Russia.
Material on the topic
The offer assumed that when opening a pickup point, its owner would receive 12% of turnover for the first three months without any other conditions. After three months, a regressive interest rate began to apply (the percentage of profit constantly changed depending on the growth of turnover). For example, for a turnover of up to 500,000 rubles, the owner of a pickup point received 10%; if the turnover increased to 1 million rubles, the rate regressed to 8%, to 1.5 million rubles – 5%, and so on up to 1.5% of the turnover.  ;
“All this was absolutely tolerable, and our network quickly grew to 255 pickup points with an investment cost of about 115 million rubles,” continues Chatulov.
In 2022, Yandex Market began to actively develop in large cities. “Many people joined in then. Businessmen participated in summits with the leadership of the Yandex development branch, received interesting exclusive offers, for example, to take over Siberia with the prospect that a new distribution center will be built there for fast delivery of goods,” says another Yandex franchise holder, his words are confirmed by another Forbes interlocutor.
But in May 2023, Yandex abruptly changed the offer, continues the first franchisee. A so-called payment ceiling for expensive goods of 750 rubles was added to the regressive interest rate. This means that when selling, for example, a new smartphone, the PVZ received not a percentage of its price, but a fixed, and small, amount. The cost of the goods on which restrictions were imposed was not constant, but was calculated based on the regressive rate and the turnover of the point. If the amount of goods issued from a pick-up point is up to 500,000 rubles per month, then a fee of 750 rubles was assigned for each product worth more than 7,500 rubles (10%), with a turnover of up to 1 million rubles, 750 rubles were charged for goods worth more than 11,000 rubles (8%) , etc.
“This limitation became fatal: almost all products on Yandex were “expensive,” says Forbes’ source. — The change led to the fact that about half of our pickup points and our partners became unprofitable. The network's monthly loss amounted to about 3 million rubles per month. A year later, we had to close most of the pickup points; we estimate the losses on opening and maintaining unprofitable points at 106 million rubles.”
The representative of Yandex Market assures that everything was done for the benefit of the partners. “We introduced these changes against the backdrop of the rapid growth of the Marketa branded pickup point network – in the first quarter there were almost twice as many such points,” he explains. “Thanks to the innovation, existing branded points will be able to steadily increase their income, and for those who open such pickup points for the first time, it will be easier to calculate the reward.”
Material on the topic < p class="a9n6c">
The market is not the same
The owners of the pickup point are right when they say that they were lured by good conditions: during the period of market conquest, marketplaces were ready to incur losses in order to attract partners and expand the network, market analysts interviewed by Forbes believe. But now that the growth phase is over, this will no longer happen.
“All these tariff changes and the introduction of service fees are quite expected measures,” says INFOLine-Analytics CEO Mikhail Burmistrov. — To develop, marketplaces initially had to maintain their infrastructure, create conditions for new owners of pickup points, and provide benefits and opportunities for growth. But gradually it was necessary to bring partners to the cost of services that is comfortable for marketplaces.” According to him, there is nothing surprising in the fact that conditions for new players may be more attractive. “It is obvious that the active development and exit of Yandex Market was accompanied by a lack of infrastructure, and it naturally had to take some actions for its development, hence the larger percentage and more interesting conditions for partners,” Burmistrov argues.
The market has become saturated, experts admit. “The dynamics of demand for franchised pick-up points is decreasing: in the first quarter of this year, interest in them fell by 9% compared to the same period in 2023,” says Anna Rozhdestvenskaya, head of Franshiza.ru. “This is due to the high prevalence of pick-up points and the fact that there are practically no free cities left where one could go without fear of competition.”
“It was difficult to call a pickup point a profitable business in the current conditions, when there is no regulation of marketplaces,” adds member of the expert council for the development of competition in the field of information technology under the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia Dmitry Tortev. — We know many examples when pickup points were opened as franchises, and then the rights holders, that is, marketplaces, actually survived them in order to open their own points in the same location. Unbearable working conditions were created. That is, the potential for growth at PVZ is huge, but not in the current conditions – everything will depend primarily on the form in which the law on regulating the e-commerce market will be adopted. While u marketplaces do not have enough resources to replace all partner pickup points.”
“It is obvious that the concept of “lifespan” arises among partner pickup points, because some of them close because they expected certain conditions, but after a while they received completely different ones,” concludes Efimov from AUREK. — On the other hand, there are still enough people who want to take their place, and the marketplaces themselves solve their problems in different ways: they are developing door-to-door delivery, developing a network of parcel terminals, Yandex even has delivery robots. The model of relationships between marketplaces and partners will certainly change, and it is unlikely that the owners of pick-up points will face better times than those in the past.”
Material on the topic < /span>
-
Tatyana Romanova
Forbes editorial staff
#marketplace #Wildberries #Ozon #Yandex.Market Forbes newsletter The most important things about finance, investments, business and technologies Subscribe Copy link Share Add to favorites Materials read by Marusya – voice assistant from VK Listen Mode for the visually impaired