From Shopify to eMAG and ABOUT YOU: running marketplaces from one catalog

For a Shopify store in Central and Eastern Europe, marketplaces are one of the quickest ways to reach customers who don’t know your brand yet. eMAG sells in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary; ABOUT YOU reaches fashion shoppers in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and many more countries; Trendyol is expanding across the region.

The trap is running each one as a separate business: a separate export, a separate stock count, a separate person copying orders into the shop. This article covers what it takes to run marketplaces from the catalog you already have, and the marketplace-specific details that usually cause the first problems.

Three things that must stay single

One catalog

Your Shopify products are the master. Titles, descriptions, photos, prices and variants are edited there, and every marketplace listing is built from them. If a marketplace needs extra data, such as its own category, characteristics or a mapped colour, that belongs in a mapping, not in a second copy of the product that someone has to keep in sync.

One stock

A ring sold on eMAG must disappear from your website and from ABOUT YOU at the same moment. Overselling on a marketplace costs more than on your own store: a cancelled order is a broken promise on someone else’s platform, and marketplaces track seller cancellations. Stock should flow from one source to every channel, and it’s worth checking regularly that the number in your store still matches the number in your accounting.

One order stream

Marketplace orders should arrive where your own orders arrive, and be shipped, invoiced and reconciled the same way. If a marketplace order needs a different packing process, a different invoicing tool and a different payment check, your team will treat it differently, and mistakes follow.

Marketplace-specific details worth knowing

Each marketplace has its own rules. A few that tend to matter early:

eMAG

• Match your existing offers before publishing. If you already sell on eMAG, import your current offers first so products are matched, by EAN for example, rather than created a second time.
• Content changes and price changes are different. New or changed product content goes through eMAG’s review; price and stock updates shouldn’t send a listing back into review. Keep the two apart.
• Characteristics are strict. Categories come with required characteristics and allowed values. Decide how your own attributes (material, colour, size) map to eMAG’s lists once, and reuse that mapping.
• Orders need the invoice. eMAG expects the invoice to be attached to the order. It’s easy to forget when invoices are issued in another tool.
• Several countries, several currencies. eMAG runs storefronts in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, each with its own prices and VAT.

ABOUT YOU

• Plan your style groups. ABOUT YOU groups variants into styles, typically by colour. Decide how your products group before the first listing: once a SKU has been listed under a style, it stays tied to it, and regrouping later is painful.
• Fashion data matters. Sizes, colours and materials need to map cleanly to the marketplace’s attributes.

Trendyol

• Prices include VAT. Unlike some marketplaces, Trendyol works with VAT-inclusive prices.
• Orders go back a limited time. When importing history, Trendyol’s API only returns recent months of orders.

Pricing across channels

Marketplace fees change your margin on every sale. A price that works on your website can lose money on a marketplace once commission and shipping are counted. Set marketplace prices from your costs and fees, not by copying the website price, and review them as fees and competitors change.

If you announce discounts on marketplaces, the EU Omnibus rules apply there too: the “was” price must be the lowest price of the last 30 days on that channel.

How Opvelo handles it

Sell Everywhere connects your Shopify catalog to marketplaces:

• Live today: eMAG and ABOUT YOU. In progress: Trendyol. Other European marketplaces are on the roadmap, and the roadmap follows what our stores sell on.
• Products, stock and prices are published to marketplaces from your main catalog. A product published once reaches every channel, translated.
• One stock, everywhere. Sell a unit anywhere and it’s gone everywhere. A daily check against your accounting stock catches oversell risks before a customer does.
• Marketplace orders arrive next to your own and are shipped, invoiced and reconciled exactly like a web order, so shipping, invoicing and accounting don’t need to know where an order came from.
• Money in one view. Card payments, marketplace settlements and cash on delivery from every courier sit side by side, with gross, fees and net for each payout, matched to your bank.

The idea behind it: adding a channel shouldn’t mean adding a team.

A checklist before your first marketplace

1. Clean up your catalog: EANs, SKUs, sizes and materials filled in consistently.
2. Decide which products go to which marketplace, and at which price after fees.
3. Map your attributes to each marketplace’s categories and values once.
4. If you already sell there, match existing listings before publishing anything new.
5. Make sure stock flows from one source, and check it daily at first.
6. Test one order end to end: import, shipping label, invoice, payout.

Want to see one of your own orders go through that flow? Get in touch and tell us where you sell.