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Mountain Warehouse and Hotter-owner Unbound on launching marketplaces

Image courtesy of Mountain Warehouse

Image courtesy of Mountain Warehouse

A growing number of retailers are setting up marketplaces on their websites and working with third-party brands to offer a wider range. Today both Mountain Warehouse and Hotter-owner Unbound have news of their own new marketplaces.

Mountain Warehouse today says it’s launching an online marketplace, enabling shoppers to buy direct from a range of brands on its website. The move comes at a time when it has broadened its own range of brands by buying Animal last year and this April launching its own athleisure brand Active People. It also comes17 years after it launched its own website.

The outdoor clothing and equipment retail brand has already added brands including Nike, Slazenger and Canterbury its its marketplace, which is run using Mirakl technology. It says that sellers who join its marketplace will be able to reach 1.7m active online Mountain Warehouse customers. Over the past two years it says its own website sales have increased by 80%, and it now sees 600,000 visitors a week. It plans to use the marketplace to expand its childrenswear, sports and activewear ranges while improving its presence in areas such as cycling, outdoor living, garden and pets products.

Mountain Warehouse chief digital officer Ed Whatmore says: “Our mission at Mountain Warehouse is to help everyone to enjoy the great outdoors. One way to do this is to keep expanding and evolving the range of products we’re able to offer our customers, especially online. The marketplace is a fantastic way for us to do this and we’re excited about the potential it brings. It’s great to see some market leaders joining us online and new product areas will help deepen and complement our existing customer proposition.”

Hotter parent company Unbound has previously said it plans to launch its own marketplace and today announces that it’s doing so using Mirakl technology. The Unbound Group platform will start to launch in late July before launching fully in early September 2022. Unbound says it has already recruited a number of partner brands, and will unveil more details in due course. Its partners will be able to put their products in front of 4.6m customers.

Ian Watson, chief executive of Unbound Group, says: “We are leveraging our proven proposition to tap into the increasing number of 55+ consumers that are shopping online. Through our new platform, we are creating a group that understands, connects with and sells to our key target consumer on a broader and deeper basis. Mirakl’s proven capabilities and scalable technology made them the obvious partner for us, bringing the technology, expertise and ecosystem that will help us to develop a truly curated platform at scale, which will be launched later this year.”

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