Tesco brings back online shop with Marketplace launch

Tesco marketplaceSix years after pulling the plug on Tesco Direct, the supermarket giant has launched an online marketplace, giving customers access to thousands of third-party products when doing their online grocery shopping.

The move, which will resurrect Tesco’s attack on Amazon, Argos and eBay, sees the retailer launch the platform with with 17 sellers, including Charles Bentley, Silentnight, Tefal and Tommee Tippee and 9,000 products across DIY, garden, homeware, pet care and toys.

The supermarket insists the addition of a marketplace will make Tesco.com “a one-stop shop for everything customers need”.

While the third-party products will be listed next to Tesco groceries online and on the app, the products will be fulfilled directly by the supplier. It will give the supermarket a similar offer to customers but without any financial risk.

Marketplace director Peter Filcek told The Grocer: “Ultimately it all boils down to wanting to give our customers access to more than we carry.

“We were looking at customer searches on our websites and we found things that we just don’t carry in Tesco [stores] or online and so that prompted a stream of thinking around what we could do to open up that range, to give customers what they’re looking for because they were genuinely looking for all sorts of things.

“We’re now able to meet really quantified customer demand in a way that we could never mobilise a retail supply chain to do. So we’ll go where the customers tell us to go, where the opportunities are.”

Tesco Direct was set up in 2006 by former CEO Sir Terry Leahy as part of the retailer’s expansion plans, which also included Tesco Bank. This growth strategy was beefed up under his successor, Philip Clarke who snapped up South Korean chain Homeplus, restaurant chain Giraffe, video on demand service Blinkbox and launched Tesco Broadband and Tesco Opiticians.

However, the loss-making Tesco Direct was shut in 2018, while the other divisions were flogged off under then CEO Dave Lewis, as part of his plan to get back to basics.

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