E-Commerce Platform Shopee Suspends Operation in France

BEIJING, March 1 (TMTPOST) — Shopee announced that it will suspend Shopee.fr on March 6, four months after the French site entered operation.

Shopee said that its French site was set up for initial testing and that the company had decided to not provide service in France. Shopee’s French site was launched last October. However, the company will continue to adopt an “open-minded and disciplined approach to exploring new markets”, the company told Bloomberg.

Shopee entered the European market last September. The international e-commerce heavyweight started operation first in Poland and later entered Spain and France in October.

Shopee’s operation in Poland and Spain has been quite successful. Statistics from mobile market research firm App Annie show that Shopee was the most-downloaded mobile application for shopping in the past 30 days in Poland and Spain. In comparison, Shopee did not even enter the top 10.

In France, Shopee faces fierce competition from international e-commerce giant Amazon, AliExpress and local e-commerce platform Cdiscount, etc.

Shopee moved into several new markets last year, including European markets, Latin American markets and the Indian market. It is reported that Shopee’s daily orders already reached 100,000 several weeks after its soft launch in India. The e-commerce platform might be able to compete with Amazon and Flipkart in India.

However, Shopee is facing a potential regulatory crackdown in India. Southeast Asian Internet giant SEA Limited’s game publishing unit Garena was hit by a regulatory crackdown in India. Garena’s mobile shooter game Free Fire was banned in India. The Confederation of All India Traders also requested the authorities in India in an open letter to add Shopee to the blacklist. Investors had expressed concerns over the possibility of a ban on Shopee.

Founded in 2015, Shopee is a Singaporean multinational e-commerce company under SEA Limited. The company currently employs over 20,000 people and had 343 million monthly visitors in 2021. It is considered as the largest e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia.

关键词： English