Cdiscount is a French online retail platform that provides various products, such as electronics, apparel, and household goods, at competitive rates.
If you’d like to start your own marketplace like Cdiscount, you’re facing a buy vs build decision. So before you decide to build it in-house on top of Spree open-source, consider using Vendo which is a marketplace SaaS. Go live, start selling, iterate.
Build vs Buy a marketplace?
There are several positives to using open-source, like having total control and flexibility in development. But, it’s important to remember that these advantages are not without their costs. Building a complete marketplace solution from scratch is a time-consuming and expensive endeavor, often taking many months or years. This insight comes from our experience with multiple marketplace ventures.
If you haven’t received substantial funding, you are likely to benefit more from an integrated marketplace solution such as Vendo, a recommendation from someone who has spent years charging for marketplace development services.
Back to the Cdiscount marketplace case study
Cdiscount, a leading French online store, has become a powerful and influential player in the world of digital retail. Its success is due to smart strategies and technological improvements, marking an impressive journey in e-commerce.
One key moment in Cdiscount’s story is when it partnered with big brands for better advertising. For example, Mattel, a famous toy maker, used Cdiscount’s advertising for more than three years and got six times more return on investment than usual ads. They did this by using Cdiscount’s data and improving their digital ads based on what customers like.
Cdiscount’s delivery system, run by its branch called C-Logistics, is also a big part of its success. They send almost 20 million packages to 27 European countries every year. In 2016, they had a problem with their manual order system in Bordeaux, France.
In 2020, Hoover used Cdiscount’s search and ads to sell more than 100 products and got an impressive 8.05 times return on investment and their conversion rate went up 2.4 times. This shows that Cdiscount not only sells many things but also helps sellers with their marketing.
Lenovo also worked with Cdiscount in a creative way. They were the first to use the CARS Display platform on Cdiscount, targeting specific customer groups and making their ads better in real-time. This made their products more visible on and off the website, proving that Cdiscount’s advertising and marketing solutions really work.
How to emulate Cdiscount marketplace success?
If you aim to mirror the success of Cdiscount, consider getting your marketplace up and running quickly, within weeks, not months. Assess how your product selection resonates with your audience’s needs. Keep tweaking your methods for gaining customers, using real-world feedback as your guide.
Experiment with the market before you fully invest in building it yourself.
Here’s what you’d be getting with a Vendo free trial:
- Book a marketplace demo call: We’ll set up your demo marketplace and populate it with products, so you could give it a try and start selling in 14 days
- Customize your Storefront: Use the drag & drop page builder or custom CSS
- Onboard Brands: Invite your brands or choose brands from our catalog
- Select Products: Curate products and collections manually or automate it
- Embed products: Make your content, newsletters, social media shoppable
- Get Paid: Get paid as soon as products are shipped by the brands
- End-to-end automation: Brands sync, fulfillment, payouts, invoicing, taxes
When you’ve tried all that and it works, start thinking about building your own, custom-made marketplace project based on Spree Commerce. First, by decoupling the storefront and going headless with Vendo marketplace API, and later with your own backend, if you decide you really need it. Just lift and shift the storefront.
Nobody has to know what’s under the hood, right?
