The relationship between brands, marketplaces and retailers has changed in recent years, with the RetailX Top500 Brands D2C: Europe 2024 report highlighting that marketplaces have steadily grown their place in the leading group of European ecommerce and multichannel retailers.
While marketplaces are gaining a greater share of the list, brands are seeing their share diminish. That reflects an environment in which brands are selling through a growing number of channels. Marketplaces and, to a lesser extent, social media are now taking a share of traffic and sales from third-party retailers and from brands’ own direct-to-customer (D2C) websites.
In 2016, 37% of the ecommerce and multichannel retail businesses listed in what was then the InternetRetailing Europe Top500 were brands, 44% retailers and 19% marketplaces. By 2020, more brands were selling direct to customers at the scale necessary for inclusion in the Europe Top1000 list – and accounted for 42% of the index, while marketplaces represented 20%. Since then, marketplaces have grown, winning more traffic as they sell brands’ products to a larger audience. In 2024, brands account for a smaller 31% share of the Top1000, and marketplaces for 26%, while retailers account for 43%. That means there are more retailers in the Top1000 this year than since 2017.
How brands sell on marketplaces
Most of the brands listed in the RetailX Brand Index see their products sold on marketplaces, whether because they have their own marketplace presence, because a third-party retailer sells their products on those websites, or both. Fashion brands are the most likely to take this approach, selling on both marketplaces and social media.
Products from almost half (48%) of the fashion brands listed in the report are available to buy on one or more of 24 marketplaces in RetailX research and, to a lesser extent, so are products from consumer electronics (15%) and sports and leisure (6%) brands.
eBay is the clear leader among the marketplaces on which those brands, with products from 82% of 320 Brand Index brands available to buy on the website. Two-thirds (67%) of brands are available to European shoppers on US-headquartered marketplace Etsy, while Polish marketplace Allegro (65%), US-based Amazon (62%) and UK-based OnBuy.com (51%) also take a share. Overall, products from 86% of brands are available on marketplaces.
A large minority of the brands studied have their own pages on marketplaces – 58% do so. Where brands have a profile on a marketplace, that marketplace is most likely to be Amazon (38%), followed by Zalando (28%) and eBay (26%). bol.com and Allegro are also used, although to a lesser extent.
Fashion brands (28%) are the most likely to have their own marketplace sector, followed by consumer electronics (10%).
How brands sell on social media
A large minority of the 320 Top500 Brands D2C: Europe brands assessed in this research have their own profile on social media (41%) – fewer than have a presence on marketplaces. Those that do, are most likely to have a profile on Facebook (37%) is the platform they are most likely to have it. They are much less likely to have a presence on other websites, with 2% having a Pinterest profile, followed by Instagram, LinkedIn and X (Twitter) (all 1%).
Fashion brands (23%) are by some margin the Brand Index members that are most likely to have a social seller profile – only 2% of brands selling consumer electronics, homewares, jewellery or cosmetics do so.
This feature, authored by Chloe Rigby, is part of the RetailX Top500 Brands D2C: Europe 2024 report.
It charts the performance of direct-to-consumer brands selling to shoppers across Europe. In previous years we have called the report the Brand Index however the rise of direct-to-consumer as a trend has driven us to update our report title.
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