While Bruno Le Maire encourages small businesses to create websites to offer their products for take-out, e-commerce giants are storming with offers of help.
Cities are also offering independent shops to group together on local platforms.
While only one in three stores in France has a site, "
the ideal is for small businesses to go digital,
" says Fevad, the Federation of e-commerce and distance selling.
"
Today, many possibilities exist to allow traders to sell online,
" adds the federation.
To read also: "There is a growing grumbling": the sling of traders against the closures imposed by confinement
But faced with this incentive, the big names in online sales seize this opportunity and offer their services.
The American Ebay announced the opening of an online store without charging commissions for three months and subscriptions for twelve months.
French Cdiscount is expected to announce similar actions on Monday.
For its part, the giant Rakuten will reduce its commissions to 5% on the categories of goods affected by store closures.
In addition, the giant present in France since 2010 thanks to the acquisition of PriceMinister announced this morning the establishment of a support fund for independent businesses.
"We are proposing to the government to create a support and solidarity fund on which Rakuten undertakes to donate 50% of the commissions received on sales generated in particularly impacted product categories", launches Fabien Versavau, CEO of Rakuten on Twitter. .
This support fund "
Rakuten will replenish it and we invite all e-commerce players and stores not affected by the closures to do the same
", confides the manager to Le
Parisien
.
He is also organizing a training day this Thursday to help small businesses.
Local initiatives reactivated
Are these initiatives really selfless..Not so sure.
Because they are also beneficial to these marketplaces which thus recruit new suppliers, increase the number of products offered for sale but also the traffic on their platform.
It is also a clever way to afford a new respectability at a lower cost. On the merchant side, "
it is a means of finding new customers and of positioning oneself on platforms which attract an audience
", indicates the Fevad who emphasizes that "
many major players are also open to the online sale of products other than their own, such as La Redoute, Cdiscount, Fnac ...
".
The federation adds that many initiatives that were launched during the first confinement are reactivated, as in Nantes.
Thus, at the beginning of October, Nantes Métropole released 200,000 euros to support a local e-commerce platform, born in full confinement.
Other towns have decided to create new services, such as Nogent le Rotrou for example.
The city of Eure-et-Loir will deploy a platform called “
My City My Shopping
” to group together the goods offered for sale by traders.
With these measures, the 200,000 physical businesses that have just closed could find outlets online.