What is Whoppah

 

 

The growing consumer demand for a more sustainable e-Commerce has raised the profile of second-hand marketplaces. Well-known platforms like Vinted and Kleinanzeigen now have to contend with up-and-coming marketplaces in the increasingly competitive sector.

 

Recent news about the European expansion of Dutch marketplace Whoppah fits well into this trend. But what is Whoppah?

 

 

Screenshot of whoppah.com’s homepage

 

 

Introducing Whoppah

Founded in 2019 by Evelien and Thomas Bunnik, Whoppah is a second-hand marketplace headquartered in Utrecht. The platform sells pre-owned designer furniture, works of art and interior decoration products to over a million shoppers in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and now France.

 

Customers can browse product categories like lightning, tableware, furniture and art. Besides actual categories, Whoppah also offers to filter products according to style (e.g. vintage, modernist, Scandinavian, Hollywood Regency, etc), brand (e.g. B&B Italia, Ligne Roset, Minotti and Fritz Hansen) and designer icons e.g. (Eames lounge chair, Artifort Orange Slice or Knoll Barcelona chair).

 

 

Screenshot of whoppah.com/style, introducing the option to browse products according to style

 

 

Whoppah in numbers

With 543.8 thousand monthly visitors, Whoppah is currently the 6th most popular e-Commerce website in the Netherlands. The marketplace is valued at $52 million, and has secured an investment of 4.7 million euros at its latest funding round.

 

Whoppah is a mixed C2C and B2C platform, allowing both consumers and businesses to post product listings. Currently, over 50,000 sellers are active on the platform.

 

Buying also works in a mixed method, with interested parties able to bid on products, or simply buy them at the asking price.

 

When clicking on a listing, customers quickly learn if they’re buying from a professional or a private seller.

 

Screenshot of a random product listing on whoppah.com displaying the sellers’ name and type

 

Screenshot of a random product listing on whoppah.com displaying the sellers’ name and type

 

Similarly to Amazon, Whoppah acts as both a seller and a marketplace provider, allowing third party sellers to post product listings and interact with customers. Moreover, Whoppah also provides assistance with shipping and payments.

 

 

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Whoppah in Europe

As co-founder and COO Evelien Bunnik-Remmelts states on the company’s website, the expansion into France brings Whoppah one step closer to its goal of becoming a pan-European design marketplace.

 

According to the COO, Whoppah’s scalability and solid funding will contribute to its success in France, just like it did in Germany. After last year’s expansion to the country, the platform experienced a surge of interest and now prides itself on “million-dollar” sales figures in Germany.

 

 

The e-Commerce market in France

e-Commerce in France is booming. The market is currently valued at 159.9 billion euros, which represents a 10.5% growth from the previous year. Although the sales of products dropped slightly (-1.8%), the increase in the sales of services (+20%) more than made up for it.

 

Regarding consumer habits, French shoppers seem to prefer quality over quantity, which means they’re usually willing to pay more for better quality items. This corresponds to the fact that 71% of French consumers are loyal to the brands they know and love.

 

Learn all about the likes and dislikes of Belgian consumers!

 

Online shopping is popular in the country: 56% of consumers purchase products regularly online. Moreover, a more ecological way of consuming is becoming increasingly important to French shoppers. 26% of consumers claim to pay extra attention to the environmental impact of their purchases. This trend leads to the rising popularity of second-hand marketplaces in the country, especially amongst young people.

 

Leboncoin.fr is by far the most visited pre-owned marketplace in France, with 119.9 million hits per month. Ebay.fr, vinted.fr and cdiscont.com tie around second place, with 27.23, 27.6 and 27.86 monthly million visitors respectively.

 

Based on French consumers’ preference for quality items acquired in an environmentally friendly fashion, Whoppah could be up to a very good start in the country.

 

Check out other important French marketplaces!

 

 

Your IP rights on second-hand marketplaces

Apart from the environment, your brand’s reputation can also significantly benefit from appearing on art and design second-hand marketplaces. Since consumers are actively looking for pre-owned goods to diminish their environmental footprint, your brand has a real chance here to raise its profile and connect with a new target audience.

 

 

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The rise of refurbished products in e-Commerce

 

Tchibo opens second-hand clothing store on Sellpy

 

Zara pre-owned expands in Europe

 

 

However, second-hand art and design e-Commerce platforms bring their own challenges for brands, especially when it comes to product presentation.

 

Since many of these platforms work with a C2C model, your brand has even less control of the appearance of your products than on a regular online marketplace. But placing your products amongst a jumble of low-quality, possibly even fake goods can seriously tarnish your reputation.

 

Luckily, there’s a way out of that. globaleyez’s clean marketplaces solution is aimed at detecting and eliminating infringing product listings, images, ads and any other content from around your own product listing. This process creates a spotless, professional environment for your listing, allowing it to show the product’s full potential to your clients.

 

Apart from this specific issue, second-hand art and design marketplaces may experience similar problems as regular e-Commerce sites, which means they require adequate brand protection measures to keep your IP rights safe.

 

 

Online brand protection on second-hand art and design marketplaces

Due to the nature and usually high price of their products, art and design marketplaces tend to be quite vulnerable to counterfeiting. Our marketplace monitoring service, available on over 150 marketplaces worldwide, flags potentially IP infringing listings and marks them in our extensive, filterable database.

 

Product pictures are important for any listing, but doubly so for hard-to-describe design pieces. This is why fraudsters often copy your IP protected imagery and display them on their own website, social media channels or anywhere else online. To counter this threat, we developed our image monitoring service that detects your brand’s stolen and copied images anywhere on the internet.

 

Since social media is an increasingly important selling spot for any kind of product, we’d recommend a round of social media monitoring as well to detect product listings, images, ads and much more on popular social media platforms.

 

Based on all the information we’ve gathered, a test purchase may be necessary to learn more about the specific seller as well as the origin of the product (e.g. is it fake or grey market).

 

Finally, we offer to enforce your rights and demand the removal of any infringing content, including listings, pictures, ads and more, from the internet.

 

 

Conclusion

The success of second-hand art and design marketplace Whoopah shows the growing potential of this specific market. Unfortunately, fraudsters are also well aware of this fact.

 

Don’t let them ruin your reputation and revenue; contact us and let’s set up a comprehensive online brand protection programme for your brand!