Latest update: 17.05.2024 | by Lili
Founded in 2016, Joom claims to be the “the fastest-growing shopping application in Europe” with over 400 million installs. According to 2024 analytics, Joom has 8.9 million monthly visits, with nearly half of visitors coming from Ukraine, Moldova, Germany, France and Poland.
The company is headquartered in Riga, Latvia, and has offices all over the world, including Hong Kong, China, Germany and the US. Besides the e-Commerce platform, Joom operates a logistics, financial technology and wholesale trade branch as well.
Joom offers a wide variety of goods, including home electronics, beauty products, apparel, footwear, and cell phone accessories at (usually) heavily discounted prices. In this regard, Joom rather resembles Wish, another comprehensive online marketplace that is well-known for its cheaply priced goods - and counterfeits.
The prices offered can definitely raise red flags regarding the quality and authenticity of items. After all, can a 16-20 € cocktail dress be good quality from a renowned brand? And has it been produced ethically and environmentally friendly, with fair payment to all workers involved?
Screenshot of random listings of evening dresses on Joom.com
Find out what issues counterfeits can cause for workers and the environment!
In fact, quality concerns have repeatedly been raised about Joom’s products and services, with shipments going missing or customers not getting what they ordered.
Joom is available as a desktop and a mobile app version. Just like its pricing policy, the marketplace’s appearance is also very similar to that of Wish. Joom uses the tile format to display products, which makes the platform easy to use for social-media aficionados.
As is the case with many other online marketplaces, Joom’s software tracks visitors’ movements and suggests similar or complementary products to the one’s they’ve been looking at.
Headquartered in Riga, Latvia, Joom operates across many European countries, including France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and the UK. Outside of Europe, Joom ships to Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and many more.
Joom works with third party sellers from various countries all over the world. This makes it easier for counterfeiters and grey marketers to slip in and offer their products to customers. Although Joom has a copyright protection policy, it’s entirely the seller’s responsibility to ensure that the products they offer are not infringing copyrights.
Joom’s search bar features several filters, allowing customers to narrow down their search results according to various criteria. For example, there’s a filter enabling users to search products by origin.
Screenshot of jewellery listings from China on Joom.com
While this doesn’t mean you can’t encounter cheap quality or counterfeit goods, picking a country of origin may reduce the risk of unpleasant surprises.
Although Joom does offer free shipping for several orders, due to customs restrictions, customers may have to pay duties for their goods when getting them into their countries.
Based on the overwhelming supply of questionable quality and heavily discounted products offered, it seems that Joom may be grouped together with other “lower quality” marketplaces like Wish or Shopee. Customers and brands both should be well aware of these issues before buying or selling products on this marketplace.
An additional issue with some of the newer platforms is that they grow very quickly and once that happens, they find it challenging to regulate their own marketplace. Counterfeiters and grey marketers have an easy time registering as sellers and offering their goods to consumers, harming brands and their own customers in the process.
In addition, there is also a risk that your brand image could be hurt even if your products are legitimately sold on a platform along with bad quality goods. Picking the right outlets for your products that correspond to your brand’s image is just as important as protecting yourself from counterfeiters. While offering your products on Joom may widen your reach, such a decision would come with considerable risks to your brand’s image.
Discover how a clean marketplace can help your brand’s image and bottom line.
But what to do if your products or counterfeit versions of them appear on Joom or any other marketplace without your authorization? Well, that’s what online brand protection is for.
globaleyez’s marketplace monitoring service aims to detect unauthorized product listings on over 150 marketplaces worldwide. With our powerful software tools and intuitive expertise, we’ll find listings that hurt your brand and provide you with actionable advice on next steps, which can include the eventual removal of the offending listings.
If you have any concerns about the protection of your IP rights on Joom or another marketplace, reach out to us and let us know how we can assist your brand.