Tesco's major website change - with huge list of new items for shoppers

04 June 2024 , 11:55

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Tesco has launched a new online marketplace on its website (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

Tesco has now launched Tesco Marketplace, which has around 9,000 products for sale from third-party sellers across areas including DIY, toys, gardening and pet care.

The biggest supermarket in the UK told trade magazine The Grocer that when it hits full operational scale, the marketplace will be a "one-stop shop for everything customers need". Marketplace director at Tesco, Peter Filcek, said it launched the service as the firm wanted to give customers access to more than it currently carries.

He said: “We were looking at customer searches on our websites and we found things that we just don’t carry in Tesco [stores] or online, and so that prompted a stream of thinking around what we could do to open up that range, to give customers what they’re looking for because they were genuinely looking for all sorts of things.”

For example, last week the ‘no results’ search term on Tesco.com was suitcases - but now luggage is available to buy on the site. Around 17 sellers feature on the marketplace currently, with several trusted household brands are among those now available. These include include Tefal, Silentnight and Tommee Tippee.

Sellers will be monitored on an ongoing basis based on factors like delivery speed, returns, and delivery success rates, and soon metrics such as customer ratings and reviews. Items will be clearly labelled as coming from third-party sellers. Shoppers will pay for the third-party items separate to their grocery shop, with marketplace items incurring their own, separate delivery fees. However, loyalty customers will be able to earn Tesco Clubcard points on all purchases.

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Mr Filcek added: "We want to go big enough that we are a destination. But not so big that [shoppers] end up tripping over irrelevant stuff and it becomes a problem and gets in their way."

This isn’t the first time Tesco has had its own online marketplace. In 2006, the retailer launched Tesco Direct, a service which offered non-food items on its website. It was up and running until 2018, when it ceased trading as Tesco was unable to find a way to make it profitable. Mr Filcek said of the new marketplace: “We’re now able to meet really quantified customer demand in a way that we could never mobilise a retail supply chain to do. So we’ll go where the customers tell us to go, where the opportunities are."

Natasha Wynarczyk