This article was originally published in Chinese on Momentum Works’s WeChat account, translated by Momentum Team into English.
After the focus on Latin America, an attempt on India and the launch in Poland, Sea Group (NYSE: SE)-owned Shopee will sooner or later launch a full assault in Europe.
Anyway, with the recent issuance of more than $6 billion worth of shares and debt, Shopee has the war chest to carry on its international expansion more aggressively.
Yesterday, Reuters reported on Shopee’s upcoming launch in Spain, as announced by a social media account owned by the ecommerce company.
In the Instagram video, Shopee announced a three day countdown to official launch. Free shipping, vouchers for new users, and up to 50% discount will be provided:
Reuters has confirmed that Shopee owns this account. Although until this morning (9 Oct) only 77 views were registered:
Good market with no strong competition
Compared to Poland, where local player Allegro can put on a good fight, Shopee really does not seem to have a serious competitor in Spain.
The following are top Shopping apps in the Apple Store and Google Play Store in Spain. In both cases the top app is SheIn – a Chinese cross border player:
SheIn has been selling to Spain fairly successfully for years – however, it is largely a cross border app/site, not a platform/marketplace.
Zalando and Amazon are in Spain as well. Although it is really hard to imagine them being able to put up a meaningful fight there.
AliExpress, part of Alibaba Group, counts Spain as one of its best performing markets. AliExpress has a good reservoir of talent and expertise. However, being a small part of a larger Alibaba Group could be a serious shortfall fierce competition.
For Shopee, probably France, also one of the top AliExpress markets, will be the next.
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To understand Shopee more, check out our recent “Who is Shopee” report, released in English, Spanish and Portuguese.