Blog | Marketplaces, & exporter awards

Selling on French Marketplace “CDiscount” and winning Exporter of the Year

After an exciting trip to New York for a family wedding, I returned to work with the normal “holiday blues”, understandably after a week of socialising and shopping in one of the most amazing cities in the world. I’m making a fast recovery however as I prepare to attend this year’s World Retail Congress in Paris from Monday 29^th September – Wednesday 1^st October. It’s such an exciting opportunity and I’m so grateful to UKTI for providing me with a free pass to one of the biggest events in the retail calendar. The three day congress, focusing on “Retailing in an Era of Disruption: Changing the Status Quo in Retail” will consist of speakers from major worldwide companies, and will cover an array of topics within the retail industry, and how to overcome the challenges that retailers are facing in an industry which is constantly changing in structure and where consumer behaviours are transforming more rapidly than ever. I hope to meet a lot of interesting people and gain valuable insight from the industry’s key players; that is if I’m not too star struck! I have a few people in mind that I would love to talk to if I got the chance and I intend on featuring some exciting blog content on my experience when I get back (fingers crossed!).

Selling on CDiscount and boost in Italy sales

I’m also very excited about receiving an offer from CDiscount, which is one of the leading online marketplaces in France, to sell our products on their site. With over 1 million visitors per day, this will be a great opportunity for us to expand our French customer base. CDiscount was the marketplace which I had intended to sell on first, once we had our order management system in place, so receiving an offer from them is fabulous news and I really look forward to setting up our account and getting listing as soon as possible. It’s really great to take this step into selling on French marketplaces, and I hope to start sellingon even more when Storefeeder is up and running.

Another positive outcome of my continuous work on Amazon is that our Italian sales have doubled over the past 3 months and are almost over taking our French sales, which is something which I did not expect. It really is amazing the difference that a little tweaking here and there can make, and that’s something I have to keep bearing in mind for things like the new web site, it really is all a matter of trial and error when trying to win sales.

Exporter of the Year at DANI Awards

I’d like to finish this blog post by expressing how delighted I am to announce that The Rug House have won this year’s Exporter of the Year at the DANI (Digital Advertising Northern Ireland) awards which took place last Friday. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the ceremony as I had been in New York, but I was of course there in spirit. Pictured below are my three colleagues looking very glamorous on the night; Elaine Simpson (Customer Service Manager), Suzanna Hall (Purchasing and Procurement Manager) and Stephen McElrone (Head of Digital Marketing). We also received coverage of the event in The Irish News’ Business section last week, which we were all very excited about.