This 100 billion market in Europe has been targeted by multiple e-commerce platforms!

In recent years, the Southeast Asian market, known as the "blue ocean", has become the first choice for many cross-border platforms and sellers to go overseas. At the same time, the European and American markets have been labeled by many cross-border people as "extremely popular", "tending to be saturated", and "difficult to squeeze into".

However, a closer look at the European and American markets reveals that not all markets are red oceans. For example, the potential of the Spanish e-commerce market in southern Europe is exploding. With its high Internet penetration rate and large consumer base, it is rapidly becoming the next new blue ocean market, and there is no shortage of e-commerce platforms grabbing market share in this market.

The Spanish e-commerce market is expected to reach US $35.5 billion

With the expansion of transaction volume and scale, Spain has been listed as one of the fastest growing countries in Europe for e-commerce. Some institutions also said that Spain has now become the 16th largest e-commerce market in the world.

According to data from Statista, the size of Spain's e-commerce market will reach US$35.5 billion ( approximately RMB 257.84 billion ) in 2024 , and by 2029 , this figure will soar to US$56.46 billion ( approximately RMB 409.7 billion ). During the next five years from 2024 to 2029 , the market's compound annual growth rate will be as high as 9.72% .

The rapid growth of the market in recent years is closely related to the increasing Internet penetration rate. According to RetailX data, the Internet penetration rate in Spain has reached 93%. Driven by this trend, more and more consumers are turning from offline shopping to online shopping platforms.

Survey data on consumer behavior show that in 2023, 24% of Spaniards will shop online at least once a month, 22% of consumers will shop online once every two weeks, 20% of consumers will shop online every week, and 16% of consumers will shop online multiple times a week.

Based on this, the agency predicts that this year, the penetration rate of e-commerce users in Spain will reach 43.0%, and is expected to grow to 58.05 % by 2029 .

On the other hand, last year's continued inflation had a significant impact on Spanish consumers. Some people are very sensitive to prices and often look for discounts online. More than 60% of the consumers interviewed said that this phenomenon makes them prefer online shopping. One survey showed that more than 40% of Spanish consumers would first look for product information on social media and then purchase on e-commerce platforms.

Thanks to the growing number of Internet users and consumers' increasing trust in online shopping, the Spanish market has become the focus of many e-commerce professionals. Some industry insiders say that "Spain may be a new blue ocean for expanding into Europe."

At the same time, old and emerging e-commerce platforms have also achieved rapid development relying on this blue ocean market.

SHEIN was selected as the best new platform in Spain in 2024, with outstanding performance

Among them, the performance of fast fashion clothing platform SHEIN in the Spanish market is worth mentioning.

Recently, in the selection of market research organization Marketplaces Hoy, SHEIN became the best new e-commerce platform in Spain in 2024, and was also listed as a recommended channel in 2024. With its excellent performance, SHEIN surpassed a number of internationally renowned platforms such as Leroy Merlín and MediaMark.

In addition, according to the ECDB report, as early as 2023, SHEIN will surpass European local brands ZARA and H&M with 11% of the fashion market share in Spain, with the market share of these two brands accounting for 6% and 3% respectively. Moreover, among the fashion e-commerce platforms with the largest number of buyers in Spain announced by Kantar, SHEIN ranks second after Amazon, and its development momentum is quite rapid.

All the data show that SHEIN has long been highly recognized by Spanish consumers and the fashion e-commerce industry.

When SHEIN first entered Spain, it started as an independent brand, and later opened up a platform model in the market, attracting many local brands and sellers to join. Under this model, SHEIN platform products were sold to many European countries, further expanding its popularity.

Currently, SHEIN's market share in many countries around the world is constantly increasing.

Take the United States for example. This year, SHEIN became the country's third-largest online fashion retailer, ranking behind Amazon and Walmart. In France, it was ranked the second-largest clothing and fashion brand last year. In the UK, its sales last year reached 1.55 billion pounds, a year-on-year increase of 38%. In the German market, it is also very popular among consumers.

The latest report from DCDX shows that SHEIN is the only fashion clothing brand among the top 25 brands that will be most popular among Generation Z in 2024 (including Disney, Roblox, Apple, ChatGPT, SHEIN, etc.). In September and the third quarter of this year, it also became the world's most visited fashion clothing website, ahead of NIKE, H&M and ZARA.

After all, SHEIN is just one of the platforms that has performed well in Spain. There are also old platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress in the market, as well as new platforms such as Temu that are gradually emerging, all of which are competing for market share.

In addition to SHEIN, there are many other platforms competing for this market

As the most important e-commerce platform in Spain, Amazon can be said to be the preferred shopping platform for local consumers.

Data from mobile data analysis platform Data.ai shows that Amazon is the e-commerce platform with the largest number of active users in Spain, with 149 million monthly visitors, covering almost 90% of local online shoppers. In the "Top 100 Cross-border E-commerce Platforms in Europe" released by CBCommerce.eu in October, Amazon also took the throne of the largest cross-border e-commerce platform in Europe.

In addition, Amazon Prime service has an average score of 8.4 points, which shows that consumers have great trust in it. Overall, Amazon has an unshakable position in Spain and even the entire European market.

However, research firm Elogia also pointed out that in addition to Amazon, Temu, which has emerged in recent years, is also becoming increasingly important in the Spanish e-commerce market.

Since its launch in Spain last April, Temu’s downloads and user numbers have been soaring. Data shows that it only gained less than 700,000 users in the month of its launch, but a year later, this number soared to more than 10 million, an increase of more than 15 times, and it once ranked first in the number of iOS shopping apps downloaded in Spain.

The latest NIQ consumer report also shows that in the first half of this year, Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Temu accounted for as much as 34% of the market share in Spain.

In addition, there is another platform that must be mentioned. Recently, news has come out that TikTok's Spanish e-commerce business will be officially launched.

It is reported that it has attracted more than 500 merchants to settle in, with about 300,000 product SKUs. While TikTok's landing has injected new vitality into European e-commerce, it will inevitably increase competition among major platforms in the Spanish market, but for sellers who want to go overseas, it also provides many new opportunities.

In general, the Spanish e-commerce market has attracted many major platforms to compete for a share of the market due to its rapid growth and large number of Internet consumers. However, this also shows that it has unlimited potential. I believe that more platforms or sellers will get their share of the market in the future.