How E-commerce Marketplaces Can Help You Setup an Offline Presence in a New Market
Blogs
The Pandemic changed how people shop as online shopping became the only viable option. But once restrictions eased, physical retail regained it’s former glory. While these were the trends of the past, e-commerce and offline retail aren’t competing anymore. They go hand-in-hand in the form of omnichannel retail.
Research shows that consumers choose shopping channels based on factors like discounts [1] and convenience [2]. In fact, 60% of consumers have utilized a hybrid service like BOPIS, with many citing it as a key factor in their shopping decisions.
So, if you are considering establishing an offline presence in a new market, you’ll need to be strategic with an online presence as well. But before we jump into that. Let us take a look at some challenges that your business may face while launching an offline presence in a new market.
Challenges of Establishing an Offline Presence in a New Market
If not prepared, expanding into a new market can turn into a costly affair, especially when you directly take the offline route.
If you seek to work with a partner, the first challenges begin with finding a trustworthy one. You also need to consider factors such as reliability, transparency, and the cost of working with a partner.
On the other hand, if you decide to expand offline yourself, you are likely to face the following challenges:
-
High set-up and running costs – cannot be avoided. Payments for electricity, water, maintenance staff, and rent need to be made every month. Combining these with the cost of marketing and promotions can inflate your expenses further.
-
Finding a retail space at a key location – because it can affect sales. The more popular a location, the better it is for business. Isolated places restrict your expansion efforts.
-
Creating brand awareness – can be a challenging task while entering a new market. You need to make people aware of your products at the earliest.
-
Lack of customer data – can be an issue if you want to know more about your customers in a new market. Your staff will be occupied in taking care of customer needs instead of recording customer details like age, gender, preferences, and other information.
The Solution- E-commerce Marketplaces
You may wonder, how do e-commerce marketplaces fit into your need for an offline setup?
Don’t worry, you don’t have to give up your offline game plan! In fact, to help your offline strategy take off, you need to launch it through an online plan. And, the best way to do this is to start selling through online marketplaces in the new market before you actually launch your offline store or presence.
Marketplaces provide you with the opportunity to sell in a market without being physically present in that location. This gives you the starting point you need to build your brand name in the new market. To remind you just how helpful they are, here’s a short list of the benefits of online marketplaces:
Benefits of Shaping Your Offline Strategy with Online Marketplaces
1. Reach a wide audience with ease
When you list your goods on a marketplace, you can sell just about anywhere and to anyone in the world. With marketplaces like Lazada, Qoo10, Amazon, and eBay you can easily reach e-commerce consumers all over the world.
2. No delivery hassles
Reaching a multitude of people at varying distances can be a pain. Especially, if you have to deliver to them from your warehouse headquarters. With the help of marketplaces, you can easily send your inventory to the marketplace warehouses at different locations and reduce delivery charges (which peak when you have your own warehouse in the new market). Marketplaces also allow you to use your own carriers to deliver products ordered through their platform. In case you have any reliable fulfillment partners in the new market, you can opt for this option too.
3. Start selling from day one
Selling through marketplaces helps you start selling immediately. You do not have major setup procedures, and the cost of selling on marketplaces is small. You are mostly charged commissions per order you receive. You can also manage attractive product prices due to the low cost of selling through marketplaces.
4. Build brand awareness
Online marketplaces are great platforms to establish your brand with customers before you go offline in a new region. Without knowledge of the brand you sell, people are not going to walk through your doors. In fact, how would people know if your brand is trustworthy? With millions of monthly visitors, marketplaces have gained the confidence of online shoppers. By selling on them, your brand name can be promoted even before you enter the market. Later, when you establish your offline presence, people will know of your brand already.
5. Access to Customer Data
By collecting crucial data, you can collate it and use it to fuel your offline strategy. Several marketplace management systems offer crucial sales data & statistics about your online consumers’ likes and dislikes, popular purchases, and more. For a better customer experience, you can automate order and delivery communications, stock changes, and promotions. Once you gain maximum attention from the people you want to target, you can start studying them and then launch your offline retail strategy.
Making it Possible with Ready Integrations
When you sell through e-commerce marketplaces, your ability to operate in a new market relies heavily on how well your backend systems connect with local platforms, both for listing your products, managing orders, and monitoring inventory. Integrations make this possible without having to build anything from scratch.
Through pre-built marketplace integrations, you can connect your existing tools and systems to launch and manage product catalogs, orders, and inventory on major platforms in your target market. This ensures your listings are accurate, orders are fulfilled quickly and accurately, and your stock levels are reflected correctly. Additionally, your orders flow directly into your backend systems without delays or errors.
Last-mile carrier integrations are equally important. These allow you to automatically assign orders to local delivery partners that customers in that region already trust. Instead of trying to manually coordinate shipping, everything from tracking to delivery updates can be automated.
By leveraging these integrations, you can go live in a new market faster, minimize operational headaches, and create a seamless shopping experience that builds customer trust, well before you open a physical store.
The e-commerce ecosystem is transforming as we speak. In order to navigate the changes and challenges of modern retail, it is crucial for to understand new markets and plan a strategy that supports your growth. A stable and successful way to do this is by first establishing a strong online presence and then setting up offline retail stores.
Want to explore new markets and engage in cross-border e-commerce? Implement smart technology today! Reach out to us to learn how.
References –
[1] – Euromonitor.com – Top Retail Trends in 2025: Discount Formats and Social Commerce Drive Growth