Goods from the largest marketplaces in Russia – Wildberries and Ozon – have recently started arriving to customers with noticeable delays.
While delivery used to take one to two days, now the timeframes have stretched to two weeks. This is reported by Forbes with reference to sellers, logisticians, and participants in the ecommerce market.
According to the publication's sources, the disruptions have affected various categories – from footwear and cosmetics to household goods and food products. Problems are observed both in deliveries from sellers' warehouses (FBS) and from the platforms' own warehouses (FBO).
One of the major home textile sellers reported that in September, goods were stuck at sorting centers for up to ten days or more.
Representatives of the cosmetics industry clarified that due to disruptions in receiving at one of Wildberries' warehouses, delays reached 10-15 days, and some sellers were forced to switch to other warehouses.
According to analysts, Ozon's difficulties began in the summer and peaked at the end of August.
Delays at Wildberries appeared in September, which may be related to the flow of customers between platforms.
The purple marketplace reports that in isolated cases, delivery could indeed be delayed due to mass orders and increased demand for certain products.
Ozon acknowledged that at the beginning of September, some goods were delivered late due to atypical loads on Moscow and St. Petersburg warehouses and a shortage of trunk transport. The company noted that currently more than 92% of orders are delivered on time.
According to representatives of the logistics market, the problems are systemic. It is noted that distribution centers are overloaded, and there is a shortage of available slots for cargo submission in Moscow and neighboring regions. It is indicated that for the next three to five days, time slots are often completely booked.
Experts note that the main reason for the delays lies not in some global problems of the entire country or specific regions in logistics, but in the overloaded infrastructure of the marketplaces themselves.
It is precisely due to the miscalculations of the platforms that the average delivery time has increased from one day to five to seven, and in some regions – up to three weeks.
Moreover, the situation with the shortage of personnel in warehouses has worsened. According to market participants, the transition from outsourcing contractors to internal digital personnel selection systems has proven less effective, leading to a shortage of workers and disruptions in order processing.
According to research agencies, logistics is now among the top five sectors with the highest number of vacancies, but the salaries of drivers and warehouse workers are rising more slowly than inflation. Combined with the increase in order volume, this intensifies the load on the infrastructure.
Observers note that the increase in delivery times is becoming a reputational risk for marketplaces. According to them, sellers are facing mass cancellations and returns, while buyers are becoming increasingly demanding and impatient – if marketplaces do not expand their logistics capacities, delays may become permanent.