On Thursday 27 February 2020, Retail Without Borders (RWB) – part of the We Are Pentagon Group, hosted its first Marketplace Awards Ceremony in London at the top of one of London’s most iconic landmarks.

The exclusive black-tie gala dinner and awards ceremony, held at the top of the Gherkin, was attended by 120 decision-makers from leading global marketplaces and organisations including Shieldpay, Department for International Trade, eBay, SEKO Logistics, ShipStation, Zalando, Facebook, TheMarket, SoftBank Telecom Europe, Catch, Sprii, OnBuy, ZigZag Global and more.

Hosted by former BBC Breakfast journalist, Declan Curry, the RWB awards ceremony was the first evening of its kind to celebrate and reward international online marketplaces which are transforming the retail landscape.

During the ceremony, 15 awards were presented to the marketplaces which scored the highest for the most seller-friendly policies, having been adjudicated by Thomas Andersson of consultancy STIQ.

Laurence Guy, CEO of the We Are Pentagon Group, said: “It was fantastic to host our first ever Retail Without Borders awards ceremony at such a prestigious venue with panoramic views of London’s most iconic skyline. We were delighted to have been joined by representatives of marketplaces across Europe, LATAM, Middle East and Australasia to reward the highest scoring marketplaces across categories which encompass marketplace innovation on sustainability, logistics, customer service, automation and more.”

The awards and winners are as follows:

Marketplace Activation Award sponsored by We Are Pentagon – Winner, Wish

• The award goes to Wish for providing the best services to international/local sellers for setting up their account, needed support through that process and tools which expedite the process immensely.

Marketplace Merchant Logistics Award sponsored by SEKO Logistics – Winner, OnBuy

• The award goes to OnBuy for offering the sellers good logistics SLAs with very limited restrictions for their logistics set up on the marketplace.

Marketplace Fulfilment Award sponsored by SEKO Logistics – Winner, Zalando

• The award goes to Zalando for their ZFS solution, which removes the hassle for partners to do inbound and return, with simple and individual solutions catered to their specific needs.

Marketplace Branding Award sponsored by ZigZag Global – Winner, TheMarket

• The award goes to TheMarket for enabling their sellers to promote their brand on the platform through their personal stores and additional services the marketplace offers.

Marketplace Curation Award sponsored by Storesome – Winner, Rakuten

• The award goes to Rakuten Ichiba for enabling their sellers to curate their listings at a great extend and maximise their success on the platform.

Marketplace Customer Service Award sponsored by We Are Pentagon – Winner, Fruugo

• The award goes to Fruugo for supporting their sellers at the best of their abilities by providing 1st line CS and support of the sellers through the whole customer experience on the platform.

Marketplace Automation Award sponsored by ZigZag Global – Winner, Yahoo! Japan

• The award goes to Yahoo JP for giving their sellers the needed documentation, technical support and guidance through out the course of the seller’s marketplace integration.

Marketplace Merchant Service Award sponsored by Shieldpay – Winner, Cdiscount

• The award goes to Cdiscount for their support of the sellers once they onboard the marketpace by providing them with excellent account management help, various tools for promotion and advertisement.

Marketplace Payments Award sponsored by Shieldpay – Winner, eBay

• The award goes to eBay for providing their sellers with services that make the selling reimbursements of their stock be fast, easy to access and at a regular basis.

Marketplace Expansion Award sponsored by We Are Pentagon – Winner, Fruugo

• The award goes to Fruugo for their ever growing portfolio of territories for expansion, support for currency exchange , translation of the products.

Marketplace Sustainability Award sponsored by ZigZag Global – Winner, Depop

• The award goes to Depop for giving individual and smaller sellers the opportunity to resell their old products, work with them to decrease fabric use and work on helping the industry to be more sustainable.

Marketplace Rising Star Award sponsored by Storesome – Winner, Catch

• The award goes to Catch, for really embracing the cross border community and making every effort to enable international sellers to be successful on their marketplace.

Fashion Marketplace of the Year Award sponsored by Shieldpay – Winner, La Redoute

• The award goes to La Redoute for their constant growth of the Fashion category, growth of their customer base and consequently continous growth of fashion suppliers.

Consumer Electronics Marketplace of the Year Award sponsored by Shieldpay – Winner, Fnac Darty

• The award goes to Fnac Darty for their never ending expansion of customer base and product range in technology.

Marketplace of the Year Award sponsored by We Are Pentagon – Winner, eBay

• The award goes to eBay for providing their sellers with an end to end solution for accessing different markets around the world and gathering new customers with a great ease.

The Marketplace Awards Ceremony took place at the end of the first day of the Retail Without Borders 2020 conference, held at London’s QEII Centre in the heart of Westminster on 27-28 February.