Founded in 1998, Cdiscount is the most relevant French marketplace, competing directly with Amazon.fr. The online platform was born initially as a shopping destination for those looking for CDs and DVDs, and then it soon became the leading online retailer for electronics.

While originally famous for electronic goods, Cdiscount is a general marketplace that offers a wide variety of products, including home & garden, fashion, toys and more. It boasts over 50 million visits every month, 10.2 million active customers, and around 5,000 worldwide active sellers. 

The strength of the French marketplace is also the great cachet of services that it provides, along with the selling opportunity. Most importantly, Cdiscount has a substantial fulfilment and delivery service. The giant has 22,000 delivery points all around France and dispatches over 30 million parcels per year.

Fnac was created back in 1954, whose name is the acronym of Fédération Nationale d’Achat des Cadres, translated “National Purchasing Federation for Executives”, founded with the idea of selling products at a more affordable, discounted price.

While several brick-and-mortar shops have been opened under the Fnac’sFnac’s flag since its foundation, the company launched the marketplace in 2009. Like Cdiscount, Fnac has become popular for home appliances and electronics, but it is a general marketplace, providing consumers with meaningful product choices across many categories.

In 2016, Fnac took over Darty, another well-known French retailer, created the Fnac Darty Group, a leading European multinational company specialising in electrical products – reaching €7.7 billion in revenue in 2020.

If you are a fashion brand or retailer, La Redoute is the platform to consider selling into without any doubt. This marketplace is likely to have the most ancient history as it was founded by Joseph Pollet in 1837 under the name ”Filatures de laine de La Redoute” in Roubaix.

Over the years, La Redoute has become the top shopping destination for fashion and home décor with over 10 million customers, local and international, purchasing actively on the website. Also, La Redoute boasts of having a great brand awareness: “The La Redoute websites are visited by more than 7 million visitors every month and there is vast brand awareness in France, with 99% of those aged 18-65 being familiar with La Redoute.”

Finally, La Redoute isn’t a pure-play marketplace as it has its own brands and collections available on the platform. Still, the selling opportunity is enormous – 90% of its turnover is digital, and 30% is achieved internationally.

Part of the Shopinvest Group since last year, Rue Du Commerce is a purely French marketplace, so it solely trades in the nation. When it was founded in 1999, Rue Du Commerce initially specialised in technological equipment and house appliances trading. Then, it expanded its products portfolio when it launched the marketplace platform in 2007. 

As a marketplace exclusively targeting the French ecommerce market, Rue Du commerce records almost 4 million online monthly visits, and over 90% of those come from the homeland. Also, 75% of the 7,700 brands trading actively on the platform are French.

As a market-leading ecommerce service provider, Arcade Retail offers an end-to-end retail solution, acting as the merchant of record to enable cross-border trade strategy in over 100 countries and 80 marketplace channels, including Cdiscount, Fnac and La Redoute. Get in touch today to discover how we can make your cross-border expansion easy!