Walgreens Boots Alliance is Getting into the Marketplace Business
Online marketplaces have become big business in recent years. Platforms such as Etsy, Alibaba, and Amazon Marketplace provide small business owners with an elegant method of getting their products online, without having to shoulder the cost – both in financial terms and in other resources – of setting up a proprietary ecommerce platform.
And business is booming on these platforms. Amazon Marketplace has a third-party seller merchandise gross volume of $390 billion and Etsy enjoys gross merchandise sales of $13.5 billion. According to Statista, in 2021, roughly 7.5 million sellers sold goods through the Etsy platform, up from approximately 4.4 million active sellers in the previous year. By comparison, there were over 96 million active Etsy buyers worldwide.
This success has seen many other big brands get in on the action and one of the latest is the retail pharmacy giant, as well as owner of several pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution companies, Walgreens Boots Alliance.
Walgreen Boots Alliance
Through the Boots part of its retail pharmacy network, Walgreens Boots Alliance recently announced it will be launching the Boots Marketplace – an expansion of Boots.com which will see customers offered greater choice than ever when shopping for pharmaceutical and cosmetic products online.
The new platform will launch in Spring 2023 and will be designed from the ground up to allow brands of any size to seamlessly list their products on boots.com and gain access to the sites' millions of monthly visitors. This exciting new marketplace feature has been described as part of Boots’ ongoing digital strategy to rapidly extend the range of its highly popular health and beauty website and explore new and diverse categories for its customers.
"Marketplace products will be seamlessly integrated with the existing product range on boots.com, offering customers access to hundreds of new brands across established names and new sellers,” said the company in its press release. "Powered by Mirakl – the industry’s first and most advanced enterprise marketplace SaaS platform – customers will still enjoy a single checkout for mixed baskets and access to all of the benefits of shopping with Boots – including Boots Advantage Card points. New and emerging brands will benefit from Boots’ reputation as a trusted and respected brand, and the potential for future store listings.”
Boots has been on a mission to introduce a steadily expanding catalogue of brands to its ecommerce offering – having launched 70 new and cult brands since 2020 – and firmly believes this new marketplace offering will empower it to bring even more niche brands and products to market in a mutually beneficial arrangement with the people behind them. Sellers gain access to Boots’ enormous online audience and Boots gets a slice of the action in return.
Marketplace Success
With marketplaces enjoying such incredible success right now, it seems an opportune moment for Walgreens Boots Alliance to step in and establish a bespoke platform for pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. These products require particular expertise and attention to market and sell effectively and sellers are sure to benefit from the big brand’s expertise in the field.
"Boots is a heritage brand loved and trusted by consumers, and in launching its new marketplace it is delivering on its promise to deliver customers more of the products they want, from a carefully curated selection of third-party suppliers that meet the company’s extremely high-quality standards,” said Sophie Marchessou, Executive Vice President, Customer Success, Mirakl. "As Mirakl continues to power the marketplaces of some of the biggest brands, we are delighted to be working with Boots, a champion of retail.”
For Boots itself, this move represents the next logical step in a process of digital transformation the brand has been embarked on for some time now.
"Marketplace is the exciting next step in our digital transformation program,” said Paula Bobbett, Chief Digital Officer at Boots. "We’re approaching this new opportunity for Boots with a deep understanding of our customers and the health, beauty and wellness products that they want to buy, and helps us to work with new smaller and entrepreneurial brands. Marketplace will allow us to build on the strength of our existing business to offer an even bigger range of choice for consumers and be the first to market with emerging brands and new products.”
Final Thoughts
Marketplaces are going to continue to provide brands with an excellent way to expand their online catalogues whilst simultaneously offering smaller retailers and producers a way to penetrate the ecommerce market without the cost and effort of setting up their own store. With Walgreens Boots Alliance’s latest foray into that space, we are seeing yet another hot contender for success in this area.
Online marketplaces are sure to be part of the conversation at eTail Boston 2023, being held in August at the Sheraton Boston Hotel.
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