If you have been lucky enough to reach a certain level of success in your business, you may be looking to expand your activity beyond borders. More specifically, you may have already considered selling your products to the French market. But you may be also wondering if you’ll eventually need to learn French (good luck with that), if you’ll need to open a subsidiary in France? Or maybe even pay taxes over there? Relax, the answer is ‘no’. But here are a few hints for you about marketplaces selling in France.

How’s e-commerce doing in France?

France is Europe’s 3rd market in value with around 45 billion € in cumulated online revenue in 2012, just behind Germany (50 billion €) and UK estimated to be a 90 billion € market the same year.

Specialists estimate that France counts 110.000 to 130.000 online shops (source) but professionals and service providers consider that the amount of e-shops that are ‘active’ (meaning ‘the ones who actually make money online‘ basically) is much smaller.

France has a slowly decreasing average basket value of 85€ per transaction (-1% versus year before). But this particular KPI being decreasing year on year is not necessarily a wrong sign. As shoppers integrate more and more online purchase in their consumption patterns, they tend to shop more often for smaller amounts and for a wider range of articles. This is compatible with the increase of number of transactions that went up by 25% in 2012.

Should you sell your products in France ?

Well, depending on the type of products you’re specialized in, the answer can be somehow different. However, French shoppers are sensitive to a wide range of offers including fashion, travel, home furnitures, high-tech and electronics, so there’s a lot of product categories that can appeal to French people.

10 reasons why you should bet on marketplace selling :

1°) Marketplaces are among the fastest growing e-commerce websites worldwide. French versions of Amazon, eBay, Pixmania or Rakuten’s PriceMinister receive millions of visitors each month. So, it’s highly unlikely that you will not reach your target, even abroad.

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