After the raids on Wildberries’ warehouses: prices of goods on Russian marketplaces have skyrocketed by tens of percent
1 August 10:12
Prices for products on Russian marketplaces—primarily Wildberries—have risen by 10–30% in just a few days, according to "Komersant Ukrainian", which cites Russian propaganda media.
“I’m looking at the items that were in my cart. I ordered them last week for 1,600 rubles, and now they’re already 2,100. They’ve shot up by 30%!” customers complain.
Other shoppers who had previously selected items but didn’t manage to pay for them before the mass drone attacks on the marketplace’s warehouses began are reporting similar experiences. They estimate the price increase for their “shopping carts” at 10–35%.
Sellers on the platform have also noted that their products have become 3–30% more expensive. At the same time, they insist that they did not change the prices themselves: the increase is linked to the cancellation of discounts that WB had been offering on products. The marketplace has the right to adjust product prices during promotions without consulting the seller if the discount is provided at the platform’s expense. Sellers had previously encountered price increases for products not purchased in time—since a discount might be available today but not tomorrow—but they now note a widespread cancellation of discounts.
“WB has basically canceled almost all the promotions it was running at its own expense. This is generally understandable—it’s struggling to restore its logistics, and it has to cover losses from the warehouses that burned down. But the result is this: everything has become noticeably more expensive,” explains a major seller who operates on four of Russia’s leading marketplaces.
Sixteen WB warehouses were attacked over the course of two weeks.
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The fact that the platform’s logistics are suffering is evident from the increased delivery times for virtually all products. Among the ten sellers surveyed, delivery times increased from 2–4 days to nearly ten days.
“There are noticeably fewer pickups; it’s clear that goods that were already on their way to pickup points or had arrived there by July 20 are now reaching buyers,” says a seller of home goods. “We have almost no products at the WB pickup point right now; they say there are major delays due to a fire at the warehouse, and the entire delivery system is overloaded,” explains a resident of Mytishchi, near Moscow.
From July 18 to 31, Ukrainian drones attacked WB warehouses covering an area of over 1 million square meters, which accounts for at least 15% of the logistics infrastructure of RWB, the company that operates the marketplace, according to an expert at a brokerage firm specializing in warehouse real estate.
“The company still has many other warehouse facilities; it can rent empty ones since there are plenty of options on the market, but its largest centers were hit by the drone strikes, which inevitably affected its logistics,” the expert explains.
Sellers claim that prices on Ozon have risen following the WB attack, although its logistics infrastructure has not yet been affected. It is more difficult to attack: it is more extensive than WB’s, analysts at Alfa Bank explained. According to their assessment, Ozon’s largest warehouse accounts for only 2% of its total area, and to achieve a significant effect, systematic, concentrated attacks over a certain period of time would be required specifically against Ozon’s warehouses—the Ukrainian Armed Forces do not yet have such capabilities.
“As is usually the case in such situations, WB’s major competitors are following suit. We’re seeing that Ozon has also cut its discounts,” says a seller who works on both marketplaces.
Ozon has sharply reduced its “in-house” discounts, confirms another seller, causing this entrepreneur’s commission rate on certain products (clothing and footwear) to exceed 60%.
“As a result, sales have dropped sharply not only on WB but also on Ozon,” he says.
WB compensates sellers for a portion of their losses from burned goods. On July 30, the company completed the second tranche of these payments: according to its report, 175,000 small and medium-sized business owners received them.
The sellers consider the payments insignificant, as they compensate for only a small portion of their losses.
“The first time, I was paid 30,000 rubles for 50 units of goods that burned—a quarter of the cost price—and the second time, 20,000 rubles for 500 units of the same goods. It’s unclear how to make sense of this. Maybe, of course, not everything burned down, but there’s no further information yet,” said one of the recipients of the payments.
“This isn’t compensation, but rather payments to support businesses,” explained Alexei Nikonov, co-owner of the “Zatishnoe Sredstvo” furniture factory.
The government has also promised to help affected business owners. One of the options discussed was paying compensation based on the cost of goods, said Nikonov, who participated in the government meeting. Loan payment holidays and preferential loans from the Bank of Russia were also discussed, said Ivan Kurguzov, chairman of the Association for the Development of Order Pickup Points, who was also present at the meeting.
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