Correos Market is a digital marketplace, an e-commerce platform by Correos, which aims to give further promotion to local manufacturers and artisans who make, design or treat products in Spain by enabling a virtual shopping centre where they can advertise and sell their products by themselves through the online channel.

The main objective is to promote sustainable development of the rural environment contributing both to digital transformation in rural areas and to fight against depopulation, given that rural Spain is emptying out causing a demographic challenge at a national level. Therefore, access to our Marketplace is easy, and our intention is to continue making the marketplace grow and have as many manufacturers as possible joining to promote rural economy through e-commerce. Thus, those who wish to continue living in their villages can have wider opportunities and engage in new consumption habits in a growingly digital environment.

This project aims to bring traditional products from Spain, mainly food and drinks but also cosmetic or crafts to consumers who increasingly demand some genuine and authentic products, guaranteeing the continuity of the traditional business through new sales channels.

Selling their products on Correos Market’s platform does not only mean that sellers have the tools to manage their digital business and can benefit from the logistics services of Correos. They also receive support from Correos in the process of business digitization, which provides the small sellers with tools to manage it: sellers receive specific training related to online sales, e-commerce design or order and stock management. Besides, sellers are offered the logistics services provided by Correos for order deliveries.

In addition, by offering both the sales channel and the logistics, our marketplace allows sellers to optimize their online sales in an agile way, without financially investing to start a digital business.

https://www.market.correos.es/

• Portugal
• Spain

• Remote and rural communities
• Any business who is interested in e-commerce.

This solution can be replicable in any country which is interested in this business model. In fact, we have already developed a solution through which we can create a marketplace for any institution that is interested in it.

The project is evolving favourably given the growth in the number of sellers and the number of users shopping goods at the marketplace. Besides, several agreements with associations and institutions (such as regional public administrations) have been developed in order to make Correos Market widely known and allowing to position itself as a benchmark marketplace in the e-commerce ecosystem.

In addition, this project contributes to social sustainability as it allows rural entrepreneurs to develop their activities and start selling online while being able to stay in the rural and keep traditional manufacturing procedures which are essentially environmentally sustainable.

Correos holds a strong vocation for public service. The motivation for this project stems from a brainstorming session that sought to find solutions for small businesses in areas whose economies are being affected by rural depopulation. This brainstorming ended up with the idea to create an online marketplace, “Correos Market” with both business impact and positive social impact in mind. The solution lies in facilitating the digitalisation of these companies and providing access to an e-commerce business with the lowest possible investment and through the integration of Correos' parcel delivery service. By rolling out this platform, we make a modern e-commerce model available for Spanish SMEs and artisans to sell handmade, sustainable and traditional products or products made or treated in Spain, while accompanying these small companies in the process. Our goal is to carry out actions raising awareness of the products, to reach more countries inside and outside the European Union and to continue to promote the discussion on the digitalisation of companies and public service to support small entrepreneurs. In addition, Correos Market intends to help and gives some visibility to Spanish companies from other sectors, such as IT, whose products may not be manufactured or treated in Spain, but which are also part of the economy of our country. Therefore, the category “technology” has been recently added to the marketplace.