Let's talk Marketplace

Is TikTok Shop an e-commerce channel or a marketing channel? Ask ten marketplace managers right now and you'll get ten different answers – and that confusion is exactly where this episode starts. Ingrid and Valerie sit down with Max Burianek, Head of TikTok Shop Germany, who built the platform's UK business before bringing it to Germany. Germany is scaling faster than the UK did at the same stage...

When German e-commerce expert Stefan Wenzel took the stage of the K5 conference last week to show a satellite photo of the Atacama Desert — where unsold fashion goes to die — you could hear a pin drop. His thesis: Sales-led commerce is broken, the numbers have proven it for years, and the industry has simply chosen not to look. Ingrid and Valerie were there in the stage hall, and they have thought...

Amazon lost 50% of its Czech e-commerce revenue. Not once — twice, in two consecutive years. That's the data point that triggered this conversation. But the more interesting story isn't Amazon's decline. It's what that decline reveals about a region that Western e-commerce still fundamentally misreads. David Cikanek is a Prague-based marketplace expert who has spent years helping brands navigate A...

The EU fined Temu €200M, France hit Shein with another penalty. Is this the turning point many in European e-commerce have been waiting for? In this episode, Ingrid and Valerie go through the most important marketplace news of the last few weeks. Their take on regulation: it works – slowly, but for real. The first genuine DSA enforcement actions against Temu and Shein are a clear signal. Amazon do...

A 130-year-old brand on a channel that didn't exist five years ago - and one of the most honest assessments of TikTok Shop you're likely to hear. Stephanie Vanderplank-Jones built Philips' TikTok Shop business in the UK from scratch and is currently expanding into Germany, France and Spain. In this episode, she explains why 80% of Philips customers spend more than two and a half hours on TikTok ev...

AI can generate an impressive product image – but can it deliver that same image, correctly named, in the right format, and on time to Zalando, About You, and Amazon simultaneously? That, says Fabio Loparco, CEO of Pixel Moda, is where the real problem lies. In this episode, Valerie speaks with Fabio about what has changed in AI-powered content production for fashion brands since September 2025. T...

Live commerce in Europe is still too often viewed through an Asian lens - and that's exactly the problem. In this episode, Ingrid sits down with Lara Day, who has been building eBay Live in Germany for the past year, six months after the official launch. They explore why the European model needs its own logic and can't simply be a watered-down version of the Asian one. They discuss why re-commerce...

Welcome back, Valerie: What a baby does to business. #LTM150 Episode 150 is a special one – and a very personal one. Valerie is back after four months of maternity leave, and to mark the anniversary, the two take a moment for an honest look behind the scenes. They talk about what it was like to steer a business through a time like this - for Ingrid, who held the wheel on her own, and for Valerie,...

In this episode the focus is on data: Ingrid speaks with Friedrich Schwandt, co-founder of ECDB, about current developments in the global marketplace landscape. At the centre are new insights into market concentration, the growth of 3P models, and shifting dynamics among leading platforms. They discuss why 84% of global e-commerce revenue now flows through marketplaces and how power structures wit...

Pricing on marketplaces is no longer just an operational lever. In this episode, Ingrid talks to Alexander Ioffe (Dimax Group) and Mateusz Wrobel (base) about the reality behind repricing and automation. It becomes clear that prices are shaped by a combination of factors: competition, platform logic, availability, margins and strategic goals - and often also by dynamics within a brand’s own distri...

Kaufland is often seen as a price-driven marketplace - and that is exactly why many brands underestimate it. In this episode, Ingrid and Valerie talk to Jan Weiß from Sleeping and Markus Anstotz from Kaufland Global Marketplace about how brands actually succeed on Kaufland - beyond the usual assumptions. At the core is the question of where brand building really happens on such a marketplace. Visi...

AI agents are changing how products are discovered and selected - but what does that actually mean for day-to-day marketplace operations? In this episode, Ingrid speaks with AI specialist Barbara Branca about why the logic is shifting from rankings to recommendation systems - and why “good enough” product data is no longer sufficient. Barbara argues that listings are turning into decision document...

More than 1,000 customer inquiries per day - across over 130 marketplaces worldwide . That is the reality Irene Epp from Pertemba describes in this podcast episode. Irene spent many years working in customer service herself and therefore calls support the “watchdog of the company.” It is where problems in the business become visible first: a SKU with unusually high return rates, a carrier struggli...

How does a DTC brand build a scalable marketplace business? In this episode, Ingrid speaks with Adrien Gosteli and Sebastian Thalheim from KoRo, as well as Lucas Bassa from Channable, about the food brand’s journey from a DTC startup to a marketplace player. Today, KoRo sells on Amazon, eBay, Kaufland and Galaxus, and is preparing launches on Decathlon and TikTok Shop - but building this business...

“Peak Amazon” is back. The recurring narrative suggests that Amazon has passed its zenith – saturated markets, slowing growth, eroding dominance. Yet with USD 717 billion in revenue in 2025, surpassing Walmart for the first time, the data paints a more complex picture. In this family & friends news episode, Ingrid is joined by Andrea Engelmann (OnMacon) to question whether we are really seeing...

Connected Commerce - just another buzzword? In this episode, it quickly becomes clear that it is about much more than a trend. Ingrid speaks with Janine Hummel and Daniel Zemitzsch from Front Row about why many brands still think in channels while customers have long moved on to journeys. Budgets and KPIs are typically channel-driven, whereas the customer journey jumps between TikTok, Amazon, D2C...

JD.com is acquiring Ceconomy - and from a European perspective, the deal raises far more questions than the headlines suggest. In this episode, Ingrid takes a deep dive with China expert Ed Sander. They discuss why JD is not treating Europe as a growth adventure, but as a strategic detour. They unpack why JD’s own platform experiments such as Joybuy and Ochama failed in Europe, why trust and local...

The marketplace landscape is changing rapidly - not through isolated innovations, but through a fundamental redistribution of control. TikTok is building its own logistics infrastructure in Europe, Google is opening up agent-based commerce via the Universal Commerce Protocol, Amazon and eBay are closing their catalogs to AI agents, OpenAI is introducing a new fee tier with Instant Checkout, and Te...

Why is cross-border expansion so hard for marketplaces - even when the technology is ready? In this episode, Ingrid flips the usual seller-centric perspective and looks at internationalisation from the operator’s side. She is joined by Valentin Lennartz from OnBuy and Paul Cotsas from Octopia to unpack the classic chicken-and-egg problem of supply, sellers, and demand. They discuss why “start with...

Spain is often seen as a price-driven market. In reality, it’s a speed-driven one. In this episode of Let’s Talk Marketplace , Ingrid talks to Romain Aymeric (The Agent) about why fashion brands struggle in Spain not because they’re too expensive, but because they’re too slow. They discuss very honestly why trend speed matters more than discounts, how Spanish consumers react extremely fast to new...

Agentic Commerce is fundamentally reshaping power dynamics in digital commerce. When AI agents take over purchase intent, product selection, and decision-making, platforms risk losing influence exactly where value is created today. In this episode Ingrid talks with Amazon expert Malte Karstan about whether Amazon is losing relevance in the agentic era - or deliberately choosing a defensive strateg...

2025 was a defining year for both the marketplace industry and for Marketplace Universe itself. In this final episode of the year - and Valerie’s last before her maternity leave - Ingrid and Valerie take a clear, honest look at what shaped the past twelve months. They discuss the major industry shifts: the continued rise (and regulation) of Temu, Shein, and AliExpress; the accelerating AI shift fr...

Black Week 2025 was not what many expected - and the data behind it is unmistakable. Ingrid speaks with Benjamin Weyrich from the e-commerce agency Front Row about hard facts: why brands see almost no growth without deals, why profitability continues to decline, and why the first deal day has now become more important than Black Friday itself. Benjamin explains how brands can use Amazon Marketing...

The EU will abolish the €150 de-minimis threshold in early 2026 - but will this really slow down Temu, Shein or AliExpress? In this episode, Ingrid talks with China-commerce expert Björn Ognibeni about why the impact will be far smaller than many hope. They explore how Chinese platforms easily absorb new duties, why Europe’s true vulnerability lies in AI-driven sourcing and product development, an...

How do small niche sellers scale internationally - without a store, without a team, and without Amazon pressure? In this episode, Ingrid speaks with Isabell Butterwegge from eBay and Kim Mooney, founder of Uncanny Collectibles in Ireland. Kim explains why internationalisation wasn’t a “nice to have” but a survival strategy. And Isabell shares how eBay data like the Export Matrix and Product Resear...