Have you successfully grown your online business in your home country? Then it could be time to test your products on international marketplaces by selling in France.

The global eCommerce industry is becoming more and more accessible. Online sellers are expanding into several marketplaces with the aim of becoming a key player in multiple countries.

The lingual and cultural challenges still remain, but the growth of online marketplaces has broken down many of the greater barriers to cross-border trade.

It’s simple – for your company to reach its potential, you can’t treat borders as limits.

That’s why you should be taking advantage of the largest non-English speaking markets in the world. Let’s look at why France should be your next stop.

Selling in France

If you’re a seller who largely operates in English-speaking countries, you may or may not be familiar with the range of selling opportunities France has to offer.

As a well developed economy and a population with an appetite for shopping, it’s no surprise that eCommerce has become a big deal in France.

The French eCommerce industry grew by 13 percent to $35 billion in the first half of 2016 alone, and is projected to surpass $53 billion by 2018.

The number of digital buyers in France is growing steadily, with as many as 66 percent of the population shopping online.

An critical reason to expand into France is because its shoppers won’t come to you. An eCommerce Foundation report found that 40 percent of French shoppers don’t shop on foreign websites due to a lack of trust. This means you won’t be able to fully capitalize on the French opportunity if you don’t have a local presence.

The French opportunity is sizeable. A key indication of the growing significance of French eCommerce has been demonstrated by Amazon’s recent activity in the country.

The Seattle-based company owned 25 percent of French logistics company Colis Prive as of 2014, and made an attempt to buy the company outright in 2016. It also launched its same-day delivery service – Amazon Prime Now – in Paris in 2016 after purchasing a warehouse in the 18th arrondissement.

If these moves are anything to go by, it’s a sign that Jeff Bezos sees the second largest European country as a burgeoning opportunity.

The French marketplaces of choice

If selling online in France is something you’re considering, then the next step is to look at the easiest routes of access – marketplaces.

According to Statista, Amazon France was the most popular eCommerce website in the country in 2015, pulling in around 16 million visitors per month.

However, Amazon France is not as dominant as it is in the US and UK. There are a number of French marketplaces which you may not have heard of, that attract large volumes of shopper traffic.

Here is the eCommerce Foundation’s France eCommerce Report 2016, which reveals the most popular marketplaces open to third party sellers who are selling online in France:

· Amazon FR – 19 million visitors per month

· Cdiscount – 11 million visitors per month

· Fnac – 11 million visitors per month

· eBay FR – 8 million visitors per month

· PriceMinister – 6.5 million visitors per month

That’s over 50 million online shoppers that visit these marketplaces every month in France.

Amazon.fr

If you’re already an Amazon seller, then you know this one pretty well.

Amazon has tailored its hugely successful template to France. Apart from language and localization, which it’s essentially the same website as any other Amazon marketplace.

Amazon is also one of the easiest marketplaces to start with if you’re looking into selling online in France. With a simple registration, you can make use of Amazon’s unified European account, providing you with direct access to Amazon’s marketplaces in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK.

With 19 million monthly visitors, expanding into Amazon France could represent a relatively easy win. One important step is required – translating your listings into French. You can avail of translation services like Intercultural Elements to have your listings translated in bulk.

Cdiscount

Cdiscount is France’s most popular homegrown eCommerce website and Amazon’s biggest competitor.

As its name suggests, Cdiscount has built its reputation as a marketplace that offers best discounts on a range of items, including technology, house appliances, furniture, wine and more.

The French retailer says it processes 19 orders every 10 seconds, and turned over €1 billion on its marketplace in 2015. It also claims a 28.5 percent market share in the online sales of consumer electronics and appliances.

Who would you be in competition with? There are approximately 7,000 active third party sellers on Cdiscount as of 2015. According to Webretailer, the company has been seeking to attract sellers of luggage, jewelry and furniture as it looks to increase its range of product offerings and price competitiveness.

Interested? You can get started by filling out this form. Or you can learn more by reading this Webretailer article on selling on Cdiscount.

Fnac

Fnac is one of the most recognizable retail outlets in France since its founding in 1954 as a seller of cultural and electronic products. Its marketplace, fnac.com, is a more recent conception, having launched in 2009. It has become another competitor to Amazon in France, specifically in the media and consumer electronics categories.

Combining its online operations and store network, Fnac claimed a 13.7 percent consumer electronics market share and a 16.6 percent market share for editorial products in 2015, according to its business report.

Although predominantly known for selling these types of products, it has also expanded its offering to home design, games, toys, telephone and stationery.

The popularity of the marketplace is growing, with 18.2 percent of Fnac’s online business volume in 2016, up from 17.4 percent in 2015.

Fnac has invested heavily in creating an omnichannel customer experience in the past number of years. This has involved forging a closer relationship between its 205 stores and online marketplace. If a store is out of stock on a certain product, Fnac’s stores send customers to its online marketplace to purchase the item. This encourages in-store buyers to visit – and buy – from its online marketplace.

Fnac’s strong store presence in France gives it logistical strength – allowing it to offer a ‘click-and-collect’ option for buyers to pick up their purchase in-store if preferred. It has also launched a competitor to Amazon Prime, called Fnac Express+. Like Prime, this service offers buyers same-day delivery.

Fnac has expanded its marketplace to Belgium, Spain and Portugal, providing sellers with the opportunity to reach these markets via Fnac.

eBay.fr

eBay is one of the easiest places to start selling online in France, especially if you’re already selling on eBay.

If you list your products as available for shipping to France, eBay will automatically list that item on eBay France. The auctions site also offers a number of free translation tools, via its app store, to help sellers localize listings for non-English marketplaces.

eBay remains a dominant player in the French eCommerce market, with 8.5 million visitors every month. However, it does have a worthy France-based competitor in PriceMinister.

PriceMinister

PriceMinister, a subsidiary of Rakuten Group, is one France’s most popular eCommerce websites.

The website boasts 17 million members in France. France makes up one third of its online visitors, and it processes between 30,000 and 50,000 transactions per day.

The level of seller competition is similar to Cdiscount, with 5,000 professional sellers active on the website. It also has a 50/50 gender split from its online visitors, with the average age at 26-50 years old, according to Lengow.

PriceMinister is seen as eBay France’s biggest competitor, and it shares some traits with the global auction site, like allowing you to customize your storefront.

Delivering international customer support

Selling on multiple marketplaces presents a number of challenges. Adhering to a marketplace’s joining criteria, like setting up as a business in France, or translating the listings for all the products you want to sell in France, are two common challenges to selling online in France and other countries.

Another key challenge is customer support.

If you already have multiple selling channels in your home country, you’ll know that supporting your customers from multiple touch points can be time-consuming and messy. Add languages you don’t understand into that mix, and you’ve got an arduous task on your hands.

This is why we built xSellco Fusion. With our eCommerce help desk, you can successfully manage customer support from Amazon, eBay, Cdiscount, Fnac, Allegro, Shopify, Prestashop and more – in one simple inbox.

xSellco Fusion is also built with auto-translation features. This allows you to instantly understand your customer’s message, no matter what language they write to you in. Translate your response back into the customer’s language with the click of a button. Achieve the same response times that you would with a native language-speaking customer. Auto-translation will make your transition to selling online in France much easier.

Interested in harnessing a first-class customer support experience? Watch the video below to learn more about xSellco Fusion.

Or you can go straight to a free 14-day trial of xSellco Fusion and see the benefits for yourself.

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France - Ecommerce Industry

This is a best prospect industry sector for this country. Includes a market overview and trade data.

Last Published: 8/4/2017

Overview

	2014	2015	2016 (estimated)*	2017 (estimated)*
Total Market Size	74	72	79	86
Total Local Production	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Total Exports	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Total Imports	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Imports from the U.S.	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Exchange Rate: USD 1.00	Euro 0.753	Euro 0.901	Euro 0.902	Euro 0.902

(Figures in USD billion; * Estimated figures- source French e-commerce trade association)

Sub-Sector Best Prospects

French B2C commerce of products and services is one of the largest markets in the world and one of the fastest growing in Europe, ranking third in Europe and sixth in the world in online consumption as of 2015. This market was valued at 72 billion (Euros 64.9 billion) in 2015, and registered a total of over 835 million online transactions. It represents 6% of total retail business.

There has been a rapid expansion in internet sales in the past few years. In 2015, the growth rate reached 14% and this trend is expected to continue. Also in 2015, 37 million French people shopped on-line which represents over 79% of internet users in the country, a 20% increase since 2012. The average online transaction in 2015 was around $86 (Euros 78) and on-line shoppers tend to shop more often, approximately 23 times a year, for a total amount spent of around $1,975 (1,780 Euro) in 2015.

The French e-commerce market has over 182,000 active websites, and that number is expected to reach 200,000 by 2017. Today, online shoppers purchase travel packages (32%), clothing (10%), home equipment (7%), click and collect products (7%), and cultural products (5%). The click and collect option for grocery stores has grown significantly in the past years and grocers are adding a greater number of sites offering this purchasing option.

E-commerce through internet mobile devices, or “M-commerce,” has also shown significant growth in the past few years. Approximately 6 million French people use their mobile phone to make a purchase. Overall sales made from smart phones and tablets accounted for over $4 billion in 2015 - an increase of 54% from the previous year. Clothing items are the primary product purchased on mobile phones followed by technology products.

In 2015, 20% of internet users made purchases from a mobile device (smartphone, tablet) compared with 11% in 2013. Sales made through these devices increased by almost 40% since 2014 and now represent 10% of the total e-commerce market.

M-commerce is expected to continue to grow rapidly in the coming years as smartphones become more and more convenient to use as well as access to high speed connection more widely available.

In addition, shopping abroad is becoming more popular, there is a growing share of cross-border online purchases and in 2015, 45% of French online shoppers bought from foreign e-merchants.

French Online Clothing Stores

This sample shows 11 French ecommerce stores categorized as clothing. We know of 998 total online stores in this category. This downloadable list of French clothing stores is updated weekly.

Domain	Address	Telephone
gaaz.fr	Baume-les-Dames, A6, FR
mademoiselledanse.com	Marseille, B8, FR	+33-9-5461xxxx
pressamedia.com	Paris, A8, FR
pacorabanne.com	Levallois-Perret, A8, FR	+33-1-4088xxxx
footshop.fr
speedo.fr	Nottingham, , UK
tshirt-hiphop.com	Pantin, A8, FR	+33-9-8377xxxx
letempsdescerises.com	Biot, B8, FR	+61-749-86xxxx
sports-de-glace.fr	Damgan, A2, FR	+33-2-9740xxxx
corseboutique.fr	Corte, A5, FR	+33-6-1334xxxx
jaqk-store.com	Roubaix, B4, FR
998 total live ecommerce websites in this category on BuiltWith Pro Note: Our categorization process involves analyzing signals provided by the ecommerce store. Some websites may be incorrectly categorized based on keywords within the site not directly relating to the content or having double meanings.

Lead Totals

French Clothing
ecommerce websites

998

French categorized
ecommerce websites

15,196

Global Clothing
ecommerce websites

24,592

French Clothing ecommerce
websites with telephone

196

French Clothing ecommerce
websites with address*

281

French Clothing ecommerce
websites with email*

277

Clothing Stores using Premium Technology

A sample of stores that are using some form of premium (paid-for) technology in this category. You can seperate out premium ecommerce websites in BuiltWith Pro to find the ecommerce stores with larger budgets.