E-commerce giant Amazon looks like it is gearing up for the latest chapter in its international expansion: an operation in Russia. According to this article in Forbes (in Russian) the company has opened its first office in the country, headed by Akady Vitruk. Vitruk is the former CEO of ABC-Atticus, a publishing group owned by media barron Alexander Mamut.
Forbes cites several sources but also notes that the appointment, and the office opening, have not been confirmed by Amazon itself. We have contacted Amazon for more detail and will update this story as we learn more.
A visit to amazon.ru currently redirect’s to the company’s main page for Europe, with links to other countries’ local sites, including the UK, France, Spain, German and Italy.
Russia is currently Europe’s largest internet market, according to a recent study from comScore, with an online audience of 61.3 million users.
That, combined with Russia’s rapidly rising middle class, has led to a boom in e-commerce business. Morgan Stanley believes the Russian e-commerce market will be worth $36 billion by 2015, up from $12 billion in 2012.
Russia has been a noticeable hole in Amazon’s footprint, but that has spelled opportunity for local players, too.
Ozon — commonly called the “Amazon of Russia” — has raised $121 million in funding and has been building up a very Amazon-like business. That includes an extensive logistics network to deliver a soup-to-nuts range of goods — as we’ve pointed out before this is especially important in a country like Russia, which didn’t have an excellent pre-existing infrastructure before. That, and the lack of credit card penetration, has meant that companies like Ozon and KupiVIP have built out fleets of their own drivers that go to houses to take cash on delivery for goods. Like Amazon, it’s also been moving into cloud services. Unlike Amazon, that has yet to include any products or services like Amazon’s Kindle operation.
This is where Amazon could come in. In another BRIC market, Brazil, Amazon has been building out a business based on its non-physical goods — Kindle books and devices. This could be one route to how Amazon decides to tackle Russia, at least in part. In that sense, it’s interesting that the Forbes report specifically mentions someone whose immediate experience lies precisely in publishing, rather than e-commerce or retail.
