Chinese online vendors took advantage of the ruble’s continued decline and a recession that prompted Russians to shop for less expensive items. Evgeniya Arnautova, press officer for the Russian payment platform Yandex.Money, stated that, in 2014, the Russians placed about 50 million orders from Chinese online stores, up 40% from 2013, asia.rbth.com reports. Chinese vendors’ success in Russia comes amid double-digit growth of ecommerce sales in Russia. The cross-border segment of the Russian ecommerce sector expanded by 70% in 2014 to reach total sales of USD 5 billion.
According to Arnautova, users paid almost eight times more for orders from China during June - August, 2015 than the same period of 2014, using Yandex.Money as well as Yandex.Kassa, a payment solution that includes not only electronic wallets but also bank cards, Internet banking, mobile phone account payments, and payments through terminals. Russians’ interest in Chinese online shopping has increased with the entry of new players into the Russian market. In 2014, Yandex.Money connected nearly 40 new large and medium Chinese online shops to the payment system.
Adrien Henni, lead author of the EWDN research study on cross-border sales to Russia, noted that a range of Chinese players, who now sell via such platforms as AliExpress, eBay or Amazon, are interested in the Russian market and will attempt to sell directly to Russian consumers as soon as they have decided they understand the market and set up the necessary procedures, the source cites. A subsidiary of Alibaba Group, the online retailer AliExpress, which started operations in Russia in 2012, has become the most popular online retailer in Russia.
In 2015, the Chinese platform has become the leader of the Russian ecommerce market in terms of the total number of customers. According to TNS, the monthly customer base of the online retailer in Russia amounted to almost 19.6 million people in April 2015, showing a 50% increase compared to April 2014. Russia ranks second in AliExpress’s global audience, providing almost 10% of the retailer’s traffic, according to the website Similar Web, and is second only to the US, with 11% of traffic. Gross merchandise sold through Alibaba’s marketplaces in Russia in 2014 totaled RUB 110 billion rubles (USD 1.69 billion).
Meanwhile, the dynamics of the U.S. online businesses, which appeared in Russia in 2010, are stagnating. eBay and Amazon earned no additional market share in Russia in 2015, and their customer bases amount to 4 million people and 1.5 million people respectively. At the same time, according to East-West Digital News analysts, forecasts for the Russian online retailing market remain very favorable, even taking into account the changed geopolitical realities and the effect of the falling ruble. In June 2015, the Russian market was entered by the second largest Chinese company JD.com, with 11% of shares owned by Russian oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Yury Milner. The retailer aims to take 20% of Russia’s ecommerce market by 2020, selling Asian electronics and appliances at discounted prices.
Both Chinese players, AliExpress and JD.com, also plan to sell Russian goods in China. Chinese online merchant Alibaba Group reached an agreement with Russian retail chain ABK on the sale of foods, cosmetics and convenience goods in China. JD.com expects to start selling Russian food, jewelry, furs and other goods in China by the end of 2015. Chinese authorities plan to expand the presence of Chinese firms in the logistics chain by shipping Chinese goods to Western markets.
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