Tesco Marketplace has massively expanded and now carries more than 300,000 SKUs, The Grocer can reveal.
In less than eight months since launch, the products available on the supermarket’s marketplace – which sees products shipped directly to shoppers from third-party sellers – have swelled in number by more than 3,000%.
“Your one-stop shop just got a whole lot bigger,” the supermarket is now telling customers. “From the essentials to the unexpected, we’ve got it all.”
Tesco launched its marketplace at the start of June last year, listing products from a handful of external sellers who fulfil orders directly to customers. Around 9,000 products were listed at launch, a count that more than doubled within weeks.
The Grocer can also reveal a significant ramping up of the number of sellers on Tesco Marketplace, which now total more than 250.
The expansion in SKUs and sellers has seen Tesco move into new categories, including large home appliances like fridges, freezers and dishwashers; art and craft supplies; curtains and blinds; posters and prints; model train sets and collectables.
The marketplace will make Tesco.com “a one-stop shop for everything customers need” the supermarket said at the time of launch.
The growth means since last summer the total available SKUs on Tesco.com – which offered around 28,000 products before the marketplace’s arrival – has increased by more than 1,000%.
Tesco’s marketplace is powered in part by software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology from Marketplacer, which “enables the supermarket to find and easily connect products from third-party sellers at scale” the technology company said.
Peter Filcek, marketplace director at Tesco, shared with The Grocer at the time of the marketplace’s launch the strategy behind it.
“Ultimately it all boils down to wanting to give our customers access to more than we carry,” Filcek said.
“We knew that we wanted to open up access to a wider range of products for Tesco customers; we could see customers were searching for products that we didn’t sell, and that we could be front of mind for,” he added.
The Grocer was first to report the supermarket readying for the marketplace’s launch in October 2023, and building out a team responsible for recruiting sellers and working with them on “range, merchandising and promotional strategies”.
The marketplace model is not a new one to Tesco, which in 2012 opened up its non-grocery offering Tesco Direct to third-party sellers. Tesco Direct ceased trading in July 2018, with the company saying there was no prospect of the loss-making concern becoming profitable. Along with hundreds of job losses, its closure saw around 300 merchants lose a small but solid sales channel.
Analysts argued Tesco Direct was too protectionist when it came to the sellers it would accept, with over-caution about listing products that might compete with its own.
Other supermarkets and retailers have launched marketplace models, among them Walmart, Kroger, Auchan, Carrefour, Ahold Delhaize and Boots.
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