Page 195 - RusRPTApr23

A company representative revealed that Wildberries will sell smartphones, TVs, and refrigerators under its own brand in the mid-price range. The marketplace is expected to develop sales of these products under the trademarks Razz and Ruzz, which it applied to register in December 2022 with the Federal Intellectual Property Service.
Wildberries plans to offer around 100 household appliances and electronics items soon, with portable gadgets such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones being added in a few months. The majority of the marketplace’s household appliances will be manufactured in Chinese plants, while TV sets will be produced in Russia and Belarus.
The devices will only be available in Russia initially, but the marketplace is expected to expand to other countries where it operates, including Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Armenia. The company representative confirmed that trial supplies of these products have already begun.
Wildberries is one of Russia’s largest e-commerce companies, selling clothes, shoes, toys, cosmetics, and electronics, among other things. The company has expanded its reach to other markets, including the European Union and Israel, and operates in over 15 countries.
Employees who work at pickup points for Russian e-commerce company Wildberries launched a nationwide labour action
protesting a new company policy that makes pickup point employees liable for
delivered to the wrong person. Pickup point employees were previously only
responsible for 25% of the cost of these items. Under the new rule, which
came into effect on March 3, one employee reportedly had up to 500,000
rubles ($6,581) deducted from their wages. Furthermore, on March 13,
Wildberries announced that employees with outstanding debts would no longer
be able to withdraw their wages from the system.
Wildberries justified the new rules by claiming that their algorithm found that mistakes by pickup point employees were to blame in 98% of the cases of returns for defective items. However, employees argued that they should not be responsible for goods that could have been damaged by the carrier, the warehouse, or the sorting centre. More than 50 owners of Wildberries pickup points gathered
multiple regions
in front of the company’s headquarters in Moscow on March
in March. They are
100% of the cost of defective items that were returned or items that were
14 to voice their concerns. Wildberries
told RBC
that there was no rally in front
of their office, and
claimed
that there would be no future disruption in service;
“The information about the ‘strike’ is not true. Orders can be received without
restrictions,” Wildberries said. On March 15, over 10,000 employees
coordinated through the MEGA Bunt Telegram group to start a mass protest
in
. “We will go to work so as not to violate the terms of labor
contracts, but we won’t hand over goods to buyers,” one of the group’s
195 RUSSIA Country Report Russia April 2023 www.intellinews.com