Back Market: marketplace guide
About this guide
This is a ChannelEngine guide on the Paris-based marketplace Back Market. Here you can find information on how to request a Back Market account, how to configure this marketplace on ChannelEngine, what the specific requirements are, and more.
Table of contents
Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions
Commercial information
| Founded | 2014 |
| Founders | Thibaud Hug de Larauze and Vianney Vaute |
| Headquarters | Paris, France |
| Area served (orders) | Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States* |
| Revenue | USD 70.8 million |
| Number of monthly visits | 4.6 million (2021) |
| Website | Back Market |
| Setup cost | none |
| Commission | 10% |
| Other costs | EUR 50.00/month |
| Payment | every 6th, 16th, and 26th of the month |
| Product categories | refurbished electronics** |
| Input language | depends on the country |
| Input currency | EUR, GBP, USD |
| Content creation | yes |
| Profile on ChannelEngine | Back Market |
* Back Market has separate environments for the EU and the US, both on ChannelEngine's and Back Market's sides.
** Although merchants are required to sell smartphones with their respective charging cable – and devices than smartphones must be sold with complete charging set –, accessories such as cables and earphones cannot be sold separately.
How to request an account
To start selling on Back Market, you need to register as a seller on their website.
During the account creation process, you set up your own store on Back Market – with your own company name, logo, VAT number, and other details. You can also select the languages for your business description and invoices.
Associated costs
Back Market charges a monthly fee of EUR 50.00, as well as a commission of 10% – regardless of the kind of product.
Marketplace features
| Supported | Not supported |
| Product offers (GTIN or Back Market ID) | Marketplace fulfillment service |
| Product content | |
| Orders | |
| Cancelations (merchant) | |
| Returns (merchant) | |
| Product variations (sizes/colors) | |
| Carrier mapping | |
| Repricing* | |
| Sales channels** |
* Repricing is only supported for one country per connection.
** A marketplace that supports sales channels allows merchants to list and sell products across multiple markets (e.g.: countries, regions, and states), all from the same connection.
Settings and configuration
Setting up each marketplace on ChannelEngine follows the same flow, though not every marketplace includes the steps listed below.
- Go through the Setup.
- Create a Product selection.
- Complete the Categorization.
- Set up the Mappings: content, offers, and carriers.
- Configure the Pricing: rules and currency conversion.
- Finish the Activation.
- Check the Listed products overview.
Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions
Setup
On Back Market
To request an access token:
- In Back Market's back-end, go to Options, and on the bottom of the page, in the Entrez votre mot de passe field, enter your account password. Back Market produces an access token for the API that you need to connect ChannelEngine. As long as you do not change your password, this token remains the same. Every time you change your password, you must request a new token and update it on ChannelEngine.
On ChannelEngine
To connect ChannelEngine and Back Market:
- On the Setup page and, in the API access token field, enter you Back Market token.
- Optionally, enter information in the following fields:
- Process shipments without IMEI number - Back Market introduced a requirement, effective 1 January 2022, regarding the provision of IMEI numbers when selling smartphones on its platform. Failing to do so may result in penalties.
- Supported countries and languages - click the dropdown box to select the different countries you want to sell in. If you select multiple countries, you must add titles and descriptions in the corresponding languages.
- Supported country for repricer - to use Back Market's repricer, enter a country here. Your Back Market channel supports multiple countries, but you can use Back Market's repricer for only one of those countries.
Advanced settings
- Use shipping contact information instead of billing contact information - if enabled, the buyer's email address and phone number are extracted from the shipping contact information – and stored as order extra data. Otherwise, the billing contact information is used for this purpose.
Categorization
Categorization on Back Market is straightforward, and all categories are listed in English.
Mappings
Content
The number of required attributes under All products varies based on the countries enabled. There are three base attributes and three language-based attributes.
Base
- Brand - the brand or manufacturer of the product. E.g.: AKG, HP, Philips, etc.
- Image 1 - the uniform resource locator (URL) of the main product image.
- Weight - the weight of the product, in grams.
Country-based
- Description - the main product description, in the respective language/country.
- Price new - the recommended retail price/MSRP for the product.
- Title - the name of the product.
Optional attributes include additional product images, dimensions, and color.
Offer
There are several offer attributes required on Back Market, from which three are fixed and two are based on the selected languages and countries. Make sure to map either the EAN or the Back Market ID, which are marked as Optional but are in fact required to connect your offer to the right content data on Back Market.
Fixed
- SKU - your internal variant identifier. Usually your Merchant product number on ChannelEngine. E.g.: ABC123-Yellow-Medium.
- State - the condition of the product. Note that Back Market has unique conditions, such as Gold, Shiny, and Stallone.
Per country
- Price - the price you want to sell your products at. Note that currently price rules are not applied.
- Warranty delay - the provided warranty period, in months. The minimum value is six.
Optional
The main optional attribute worth mentioning is the Price of the DEEE. DEEE stands for Déchets d'Equipements Electriques et Electroniques, which is a a tax added to the selling price of electric and electronic items in France.
BackPricer
Back Market has a built-in repricer, similar to the repricer offered by ChannelEngine – which is also supported on Back Market.
To use Back Market's repricer, map the Minimum price and BackPricer enabled? offer attributes. – both need to be mapped per product and per country. If the BackPricer enabled? attribute is set to true and no Minimum price is mapped, a validation error is shown.
When configured, the BackPricer optimizes your prices in real-time to make sure that you remain competitive on Back Market. Note that your quality score also influences your chance to win the buy box, known as BackBox on Back Market.
Although it is possible to use the BackPricer and ChannelEngine's repricer at the same time, the former overrides any values set by the latter. What's more, the actual price of products for which the BackPricer is enabled is unlikely to be the same price exported by ChannelEngine – as Back Market is constantly optimizing it on their end.
Carrier
Carrier mapping is required on Back Market, as specific carrier tags must be submitted to the channel.
Pricing
To differentiate pricing per Back Market country, map separate price attributes, such as Price [country]. Make sure your price values are converted to the correct currency of that country. You can apply currency conversion rules for that.
Listed products
Back Market does not offer detailed content and offer status information. Therefore, you can only see limited validation information under the Listed product section of this channel. If the API call is accepted, products are listed as Published, and if a validation error occurs (e.g.: due to empty required attributes) the status is None.
Additional information
Order extra data items
When an order is imported to ChannelEngine, ChannelEngine also fetches extra data items related to the order itself – or to order lines. This extra data is specific to this marketplace. An explanation of each can be found below:
Order extra data
| Key |
Conditional |
Description |
order_coming_from |
Yes |
The user-friendly sales channel name. |
| Paypal reference Id | Yes | PayPal reference from the channel order. |
| Payment method | No | Payment method from the channel order. |
shipping_method |
No | Carrier from the channel order. Yes or no. |
| Is accepted by Back Market | Yes | If yes, the value is true.
|
* Conditional fields only display if the channel provides a value.
FAQs
My products do not have EANs. How can I get them online on Back Market?
Content creation is separate from offers. If you do not use EANs, as advised, you can use the unique Back Market ID that is generated when a product is created. This is similar to the Amazon standard identification number (ASIN). If neither EAN or Back Market ID is provided, the offer cannot be connected and an error is shown in the Listed products section.
How to exclude a product from a specific country on Back Market?
To prevent a product from being sold in a specific country, set the Price attribute for this country to 0. This makes the product unavailable for purchase.
Do I need to approve my orders in the Back Market back-end?
No, you do not. ChannelEngine imports orders with the status Paid from Back Market. Once the import is complete, the order status automatically changes to Approved on Back Market. Therefore, your manual input is not required.
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