到今年年底，B2C市场的销售额预计将达到3.5万亿美元。因此，提供更好的用户体验并将企业与更广泛的客户群联系起来是超越竞争对手的重要方法。这种商业模式在家居装修和园艺零售商 Leroy Merlin 中被证明是成功的。
Leroy Merlin 首席信息官兼电子商务和市场战略主管 Dmitriy Anderson 承认，盈利能力让他夜不能寐，尤其是在涉及 Leroy Merlin 产品市场等新业务时。根据安德森的说法，这个在线市场于三年前推出，目前拥有500多个第三方卖家，最近在2024年1月首次实现了收支平衡。“虽然这令人印象深刻，但确保这些数字持续增长，市场保持盈利有时感觉就像一场噩梦，”他说，特别是考虑到这个领域的竞争规模，像亚马逊这样的大型品牌提供如此广泛的产品，而更小、更专业的零售商往往难以竞争。
Anderson说，多年来，零售业必须迅速适应电子商务和全渠道的兴起。这些市场变化不仅改变了零售企业的销售方式，还改变了客户对购物体验的期望。通过市场化方法，总部位于法国的 Leroy Merlin 与第三方卖家合作，为客户提供以前在商店中无法提供的所有产品。“为了进行比较，法国的 Leroy Merlin 过去提供大约 200,000 种产品，现在他们在这 200,000 种产品的基础上又提供 300 万种产品，”他说。这意味着从 Leroy Merlin 购买厨房的人还可以从 Leroy Merlin 网站上的不同卖家那里获得各种电器、陶器、餐具、桌子和椅子。
市场的形成
安德森目前正在帮助企业在南非建立品牌，他分享说，在那里建立市场是一段有趣的旅程，大约在 2020 年因全球大流行而实施封锁的同时开始。可以理解的是，该公司实施了预算削减，并且有传言称该市场项目将因此而停止。但安德森反驳说，由于每个人都被迫呆在家里，全球封锁为人们提供了一个很好的机会，让他们最终可以进行这些家庭装修项目。“人们被困在家里等待世界再次开放，盯着碎裂的油漆和墙壁上的所有裂缝，他们向自己保证会修复，”他说。“如此之多，以至于我们的电子商务数量在 2019 年至 2020 年间增长了 20 倍。” 数字化转型网（www.szhzxw.cn）
他们没有在内部建立自己的市场平台，而是选择了法国基于云的电子商务软件公司Mirakl，Anderson将其描述为市场平台的劳斯莱斯。Mirakl 处理了从入职卖家和构建产品目录到实现电子商务平台集成和发票生成的所有事情。
“我们花了数年时间和大量资源来建立一个可以创造这样东西的团队，这就是我们选择 Mirakl 的原因，因为我们想利用已经存在的东西，”他说。但是他现有的团队必须学习很多东西，他甚至从其他部门抢来人员来协助项目完成任务。
他说，市场与实体店和电子商务产品相结合，对企业产生了飞轮效应，客户现在在Leroy Merlin购物的人数是以前的六倍，他们的购物篮的平均尺寸也有所增加。自市场推出以来，他们每年都超过了销售目标。他说：“在第一年，我们的目标是使商品总价值达到约500万南非兰特（278,000美元），最终达到1250万南非兰特。“2023 年，目标是 8000 万南非兰特左右，我们赚了 1 亿南非兰特，到 2024 年，我们希望将其增加到 1.85 亿南非兰特。”他们还计划将这种成功推广到其他地方，本月，Leroy Merlin推出了他们的服务市场。 数字化转型网（www.szhzxw.cn）
他们的服务产品是与 Xebia 合作构建的，使用 Appian 低代码数字工作流程软件，为承包商和小型企业提供了一个平台。“可能是保姆、清洁工或园丁，”安德森说。“这可能是一项小工作，比如让锁匠更换门把手，也可以是一个大项目，比如雇用一个团队来翻新整个浴室或厨房。”他们试图解决的问题是帮助客户完成小工作，让他们更容易与可以提供帮助的专业人士联系。事实上，这些服务提供商得到了像 Leroy Merlin 这样的知名品牌的认可，这增加了一层额外的可信度和安全性。他补充道：“我们还希望与从事更大工作的服务提供商合作，例如安装厨房或翻新浴室，但我们知道，对于更小、更简单的任务，市场上存在很大差距。
这两个市场对所有参与者来说都是双赢的——对 Leroy Merlin 来说，因为它获得了更多的流量和收入，对卖家来说，因为他们获得了更多的曝光率和更多的销售额，对客户来说，这意味着他们可以在一个地方找到他们想要和需要的一切。 数字化转型网（www.szhzxw.cn）
英文原文：
Unpacking Leroy Merlin’s marketplace strategy
By the end of the year, B2C marketplaces are expected to reach $3.5 trillion in sales. So offering a better UX and connecting businesses with a wider customer base are vital ways to outsmart the competition. It’s a business model that’s proven successful for home improvement and gardening retailer, Leroy Merlin.
Leroy Merlin CIO and head of e-commerce and marketplace strategy Dmitriy Anderson admits that profitability keeps him up at night, particularly when it comes to new business endeavors like the Leroy Merlin product marketplace. According to Anderson, this online marketplace, which launched three years ago and currently has over 500 third-party sellers, recently reached a big milestone of breaking even for the first time in January 2024. “While this is quite impressive, making sure these numbers keep growing and the marketplace stays profitable can sometimes feel like a nightmare,” he says, especially given the scale of competition in this space, with massive brands like Amazon offering such a wide variety of products where smaller and more specialized retailers often struggle to compete.
Over the years, the retail industry has had to adapt quickly to the rise of ecommerce and omnichannel, says Anderson. These market shifts have not only transformed how retail businesses sell, but changed what customers expect from their shopping experiences. With a marketplace approach, France-based Leroy Merlin works with third-party sellers to offer customers all the products that weren’t previously available in stores. “For comparison’s sake, Leroy Merlin in France used to offer a range of around 200,000 products, and now they offer an additional three million on top of that 200,000,” he says. What this means is that someone buying a kitchen from Leroy Merlin can also access a wide range of appliances, crockery, cutlery, tables, and chairs all from the different sellers on the Leroy Merlin site.
The making of a marketplace
Currently helping the business establish their brand in South Africa, Anderson shares that setting up the marketplace there was an interesting journey, which began around the same time as lockdowns went into effect in 2020 due to the global pandemic. Understandably, the company implemented budget cuts, and there was talk that this marketplace project would be halted as a result. But Anderson pushed back, arguing that with everyone forced to spend time at home, the global lockdown presented a great opportunity for people to finally get to those home improvement projects. “People were stuck at home waiting for the world to open up again, staring at the chipped paint and all the cracks in their walls they promised themselves they’d fix,” he says. “So much so that our ecommerce numbers increased 20 times between 2019 and 2020.” 数字化转型网（www.szhzxw.cn）
Rather than building their own marketplace platform in-house, they went with Mirakl, a French cloud-based e-commerce software company, which Anderson describes as the Rolls Royce of marketplace platforms. Mirakl handled everything from onboarding sellers and building product catalogues, to enabling ecommerce platform integration and invoice generation.
“It would’ve taken us years and a lot of resources to build up a team that could create something like this, which is why we went with Mirakl because we wanted to capitalize on what was already out there,” he says. But his existing team had to learn a lot, and he even snatched people from other departments to assist with getting the project across the finish line.
The marketplace, working in combination with their brick-and-mortar and ecommerce offerings, has had a flywheel effect for the business, he says, where customers are now shopping at Leroy Merlin as much as six times more than they did previously, and the average size of their baskets has also increased. Since the launch of the marketplace, they’ve exceeded their sales targets every year. “In the first year, our target was to make about ZAR5 million [$278,000] in gross merchandise value and we closed at ZAR12.5 million,” he says. “In 2023, the target was around ZAR80 million, and we made ZAR100 million, and in 2024, we’re hoping to increase this to ZAR185 million.” They also plan to channel this success elsewhere, and this month, Leroy Merlin launched their services marketplace.
Built in partnership with Xebia using Appian low-code digital workflow software, their services offering provides a platform to contractors and small businesses. “It could be a babysitter or a cleaner or a gardener,” says Anderson. “It could be for a small job like having a locksmith change a door handle or a big project like hiring a team to renovate an entire bathroom or kitchen.” The problem they’re trying to solve is to help customers get small jobs done by making it easier for them to connect with professionals who can help. And the fact that these service providers are approved by a well-known brand like Leroy Merlin adds an extra layer of credibility and security. “We also want to work with service providers who do bigger jobs, like install kitchens or renovate bathrooms, but we know there’s a big gap in the market for smaller, less complex tasks,” he adds. 数字化转型网（www.szhzxw.cn）
These two marketplaces really are a win for all involved — for Leroy Merlin because it gets more traffic and revenue, for sellers because they get more exposure and more sales, and for customers because it means they can find everything they want and need in one place.
本文由数字化转型网（www.szhzxw.cn）转载而成，来源于CIO.COM；编辑/翻译：数字化转型网宁檬树。
