Foreign companies dominate the distance-selling market in Austria

In a joint project with the EHI Retail Institute, the iBusiness trendletter has created a list of the top 100 online shops in Austria by turnover. A quick scan of the top 20 yields some interesting results. Foreign companies dominate the field here, in particular consignors from Germany. Local shops, on the other hand, are lagging behind.

Here are the top 20 shops in Austria.

The “Shoppingportale und Onlineshops Österreich 2012” ranking poster is now available from iBusiness. For compilation purposes, Austria’s leading online shops were polled on their turnover in the business year 2010. The ranking was adjusted to exclude offline sales and turnover generated outside Austria.

What is particularly striking is that only one original Austrian company features in the list of the 20 merchants with the highest turnover. As Universal Versand – established in 1957 as a branch of the German company Photo Porst – does not deliver to Germany, it can be considered a purely Austrian shop, even if it has since been taken over by the Otto Group.

The e-commerce market in Austria is worth €1.6 billion. In this regard, in 2010, the ten biggest providers in Austria generated, with 32.2 per cent, almost a third of the turnover of the 250 shops surveyed. €204.4 million was earned alone by the largest online shop, Amazon.at. UNITO Versand & Dienstleistungen GmbH is part of the Otto Group and is, according to company statements, the largest mail-order group in the Alpine region (Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol). Its three online shops – universal.at, ottoversand.at, quelle.at – all feature in the top 10, having posted combined sales of €153.6 million.

Here are the top 10 shops in Austria:

1. amazon.at, generalist, €204.4 million
2. Universal Versand, generalist, €80 million
3. ottoversand.at, generalist, €55 million
4. Neckermann Versand Österreich, generalist, €37.4 million
5. eduscho.at (Tchibo), generalist, €33.8 million
6. Conrad Electronic, electronics, €33.5 million
7. Weltbild Verlag, media, €29.3 million
8. bonprix srl, fashion, €18.6 million
9. quelle.at, consumer electronics, €18.6 million
10. amazon.com, generalist, €18.3 million

In the case of Amazon, a distinction has been made between sales made directly on the national site amazon.at and those represented by orders made in Austria on amazon.com.