March 2022 | by Lili
What is Fruugo
Table of contents
Fruugo is a global online marketplace operating out of the United Kingdom. Founded in 2008, Fruugo was acquired by its current leaders (CEO and Director of Operations) Dominic Allonby and Darren Naylor in 2012.
Currently available in 42 countries, Fruugo offers a comprehensive array of products including electronics, health and beauty, fashion, toys, books, sports equipment and even furniture.
Screenshot of fruugo.be
Business model
Fruugo works with third-party sellers and enables them to sell their products globally. According to the company’s corporate website, Fruugo prides itself on “providing an end to end eCommerce solution spanning demand generation through to order orchestration and customer service.”
In other words, this means that customers from any of Fruugo’s countries can buy products from sellers based in any other Fruugo country. The marketplace takes care of practicalities like exchanging currencies, translating listings into local languages, shipping, payments, etc.
Screenshot of corporate.fruugo.com displaying the countries Fruugo is available in
Fruugo by the numbers
According to the company’s own statistics, Fruugo has over 1800 sellers across its various country platforms. The marketplace facilitates more than 7.9 million orders in the value of 340 million GBP (approx. 407 million euros), over 80% of which cross borders and currencies.
In 2021, Fruugo registered around 240 million website visits across its country platforms and currently lists over 34 million SKUs. That data earned it the 89th place (out of a 155) on the global ranking of online marketplaces, with around 10 million website visits per month.
All this suggests that Fruugo is a relatively important marketplace, present in a large number of countries (including the US, the UK, China, Russia, South Korea, India, Japan, France and Germany) and offering opportunities to sellers and consumers alike.
How does Fruugo work
If you’ve ever ordered anything from an online marketplace, you won’t encounter a lot of surprises on Fruugo. The platform features a design commonly used by many online marketplaces, displaying the product on the left and the “buy” button on the right hand side of the screen, with a detailed product description along with similar products at the bottom.
There is one clear difference from Amazon, though: Fruugo doesn’t have a Buy Box. This means that all products have their unique ID numbers on the site and thus every seller has an equal opportunity to get their listing in front of customers.
Screenshot of a product listing on Fruugo.be with the seller circled in red
Online brand protection on Fruugo
Fruugo is no stranger to us at globaleyez. We have encountered the marketplace several times in the course of our marketplace monitoring service. A few years ago, counterfeiters discovered Fruugo for themselves and we found several fake products of our clients listed there. Luckily, we managed to put a stop to that.
Ever since our interventions back in the day, Fruugo stepped up its game and currently, there are a lot less fake products present on the platform than a few years ago. A lot less, but not zero: we still encounter suspicious listings that may or may not be counterfeit. For example, the listings below contain quite a few red flags for us.
Screenshot of fruugo.ph displaying a potentially IP-infringing product listing
Screenshot of fruugo.nl displaying a potentially IP-infringing product listing
Find out how to determine if a product is fake!
Our cooperation with Fruugo proved to be excellent. They always react quickly to the takedown requests we submit, and our test purchases also run smoothly and effectively.
While we managed to solve several counterfeit issues for our clients, we’ve recently noticed some increased grey market activity on this marketplace.
This is understandable, considering that Fruugo’s main purpose is to help third party sellers find new markets. Once there, what’s stopping a seller from buying products in a country with lower consumer prices and selling it in a market with higher prices?
We are.
Grey markets are very harmful for your brand, eroding price structures and basic trust within your distribution chain. It’s a bizarre situation: your own products are competing against each other. Honest sellers ask for the price agreed by you, but because of the lower acquisition costs of grey market sellers, they’re able to offer lower prices to customers.
Learn more about grey markets and their negative effects on brands
globaleyez has decades-long experience with grey markets and other IP-infringement threats that hurt your brand. We solved dozens of grey markets issues on many major and minor online marketplaces, including Fruugo. However unique your brand’s situation is, we’ll be able to provide a solution for you too.