Growing marketplaces worth listing on in 2027

Plenty of retailers plan to add a marketplace this year. In Linnworks’ 2026 State of Commerce Operations survey of 500 mid-market retailers (250 in the UK and 250 in the US, each with annual revenue between $7.5 million and $100 million), expanding into new sales channels or marketplaces was one of the top priorities in both countries. The others were automation and operational efficiency (cited by nearly half), platform reliability and system integration, and optimizing existing channels.

Fewer feel fully ready for it.

Only 38% of US retailers and 30% of UK retailers described themselves as very prepared to scale operations over the next 12 months. Most picked “somewhat prepared”: 53.2% in the US and 60.8% in the UK. The report found many were unsure their operations could absorb additional channels, fulfillment complexity, or peak demand without disruption.

That caution should shape which marketplace you pick. The best next marketplace is one whose shoppers already buy products like yours, and whose orders you can fulfill from the same stock and order flow as your existing channels.

B&Q Marketplace

If you sell home, garden, or DIY products, B&Q’s marketplace puts them in front of a large UK home improvement audience. B&Q opened the marketplace on diy.com to third-party sellers in 2022. Four years in, it has more than 2,000 verified sellers, and diy.com draws 464 million visits a year.

The marketplace is still growing fast.

Kingfisher, B&Q’s parent company, reported marketplace GMV up 34% to £306 million in its latest half-year results, covering the six months to July 2026. A year earlier, about half of the marketplace’s customers were new to diy.com.

B&Q also accepts sellers from outside the UK. It has opened to sellers from six EU countries, Germany most recently, and Kingfisher’s latest results count more than 80 cross-border vendors on the marketplace. B&Q charges a small subscription fee and takes commission when a product sells.

On the operations side, B&Q runs its marketplace on Mirakl, the platform behind many retailer-run marketplaces, so Linnworks connects to B&Q through the Linnworks Mirakl app. Stock levels and prices go out to B&Q from your inventory, and B&Q orders land in the same order view as orders from your other channels. Once a parcel ships, the dispatch confirmation goes back to B&Q.

Mirakl

B&Q is one of more than 450 businesses running a marketplace on Mirakl. Through the Linnworks Mirakl app, you can connect any of them to an existing Linnworks account, with no separate subscription to Mirakl Connect (Mirakl’s platform for sellers).

Of those marketplaces, more than 170 are in Europe, more than 70 in North America, and more than 50 elsewhere. UK retailers on the list include Tesco, Debenhams, and John Lewis. US retailers include The Home Depot, Macy’s, and Ulta Beauty.

Shortlist the retailers whose shoppers buy your category, and apply to those retailers first. Linnworks’ Top 25 marketplaces to watch in 2026 guide compares commission structures and fulfillment models across retailer-owned marketplaces and other types, which helps when you’re building that shortlist.

Marketplaces approve sellers on their own timelines, and you connect to each one as approval comes through. Orders from that marketplace then download and dispatch through the same workflow as your other channels, with stock levels and prices updating from the same inventory items. You can also add Mirakl marketplaces that aren’t on the Linnworks Mirakl app’s standard list.

Temu

UK mattress maker The Sleep People saw sales rise 27% within three weeks of joining Temu in 2025.

The family-run company makes more than 1,400 mattresses a day and has annual revenue above £20 million. Rising costs and tighter competition had squeezed its margins, so it went looking for new customers online.

“Reaching new customers through traditional routes was getting harder. Temu gave us access to a much broader base of shoppers,” said managing director Mike Worden.

But selling on more marketplaces meant more manual work. The company had been processing orders and tracking stock on each platform separately, and every new platform added manual updates to keep product codes and stock levels aligned.

So The Sleep People moved orders and stock into a single Linnworks dashboard before adding Temu. The company said that meant adding a marketplace no longer required rebuilding listings from scratch.

The Sleep People joined a year after Temu opened to UK-based sellers. Temu had started serving UK shoppers in 2023, and Similarweb data reported by Backlinko puts its UK monthly active users at 13.1 million. Temu sells in more than 70 markets, and Similarweb ranks it the world’s second most-visited ecommerce site, ahead of eBay.

Signing up to sell on Temu is free.

TikTok Shop

TikTok Shop’s US GMV hit $15.1 billion in 2025, up 68% from $9 billion the year before. Global GMV reached $64.3 billion across 16 markets. Momentum Works reported both figures alongside its TikTok Shop in the U.S. 2025 report, published in February 2026 and built on platform data from Tabcut.

TikTok Shop sells differently from a search-led marketplace. Shoppers buy from creator videos and LIVE streams as well as the in-app shop tab, so whether TikTok Shop works for you depends largely on video. That favors products that show what they do on camera, and sellers who can keep posting video from their own account or through creators.

For those sellers, TikTok Shop is worth a test.

A test doesn’t have to put your whole inventory on TikTok. Linnworks can send TikTok the stock level from specific locations instead of your full total, so TikTok only sees the stock held in the location you’ll ship TikTok orders from. You can also map TikTok’s shipping methods to your postal services, and shipped orders update on TikTok with their tracking numbers.

Target Plus

Target Plus is curated. Target chooses its partners, picking brands that meet its quality standards and complement what it sells in stores.

Target’s selectivity hasn’t kept Target Plus small. The marketplace has passed roughly $1 billion in GMV, and on Target’s year-end earnings call in 2025, CEO Brian Cornell told analysts the company aims to reach $5 billion by 2029.

Growing GMV fivefold may bring in more partners, but Target has said it won’t open the marketplace to every seller. For most retailers, Target Plus is a marketplace to prepare for in 2026, not one to launch on. If your products would complement Target’s in-store range, keep your product data and brand assets ready in case Target reaches out.

Faire

Faire is wholesale. Brands sell to independent shops, which get 60-day payment terms, so Faire fits if you own or make the products you sell. Faire says hundreds of thousands of shop owners and brands use the platform. If you already supply independent stockists, you can bring those stockists onto Faire through Faire Direct and pay no commission on their orders.

Plan your stock before the first wholesale order arrives. Wholesale orders take units out in multiples, so one opening order can claim stock your marketplaces were counting on. If Faire shares a stock pool with your other channels, decide how many units to hold back for wholesale.

Check your stock accuracy before you add a channel

The retailers in Linnworks’ State of Commerce Operations survey had reason to be cautious. Those selling on several platforms without centralized inventory and order management were far more likely to report stock discrepancies, delayed fulfillment, and rising operational costs.

Asked about fulfillment, retailers most often cited shipping cost inflation (40.8% UK, 41.2% US), difficulty managing delivery times (37.2% UK, 36.4% US), and data accuracy and visibility across systems and partners (34.0% UK, 34.4% US).

Each new channel makes data accuracy harder to hold, because every channel is one more system your stock figure has to be right in.

Before adding a marketplace, compare the stock figure each current channel shows for your best-selling SKUs against a shelf count. If the channel figures don’t match the shelf count, fix how stock reaches your existing channels first. A new channel connected to the same wrong figure can oversell too.

With those figures matching, setting up a new marketplace in Linnworks means linking its listings to the same inventory items your other channels use. An order from any channel reserves the stock for that order, and the updated stock level goes out to every connected channel. The new marketplace doesn’t need a stock process of its own.

Once the new marketplace is live, evaluate it for operational stability using error rates and stock accuracy, along with fulfillment performance and cost to serve. A month of orders will give you an error rate for the new marketplace to compare with your other channels. If the new marketplace’s error rate is higher, check its listing data and shipping mappings before you add more SKUs.

Pick the marketplace on this list whose shoppers already buy your category. List the SKUs you hold the most stock in first, and give the new channel a month of orders before you add the rest of your inventory. 

FAQs

How many marketplaces do retailers usually sell on?

About four. In Linnworks’ 2026 State of Commerce Operations survey, retailers sold on an average of 4.25 marketplaces and channels in the US and 4.15 in the UK, and a significant share sold on five or more.

Retailers with broader channel coverage were more likely to report moderate to significant growth. But the report found that channel count alone doesn’t guarantee growth.

How do I start selling on B&Q Marketplace?

Apply through B&Q’s merchant hub, which has a short application form. Once you’re accepted, a business development representative guides you through onboarding before you go live. B&Q charges a small subscription fee and takes commission only when a product sells.

Can UK sellers sell on Temu?

Yes. Temu opened to UK-based sellers in 2024 through its Local Seller Program, which lets sellers sell and fulfill orders locally. According to Linnworks’ Temu selling guide, applications typically take about 10 minutes. Many sellers go live within 72 hours, as long as they meet the platform’s requirements.

Temu checks seller identities against business registries. Before you can list products, you’ll need supporting documentation, such as test reports and certificates.

What is a Mirakl marketplace?

It’s a marketplace that a retailer or other business runs on Mirakl’s software, so third-party sellers can list products on its site. B&Q, Tesco, and The Home Depot all run marketplaces this way. Each one has its own seller application, so you apply to each separately. The Linnworks Mirakl app then connects 297 of them to a single Linnworks account.

How do I avoid overselling when I add a marketplace?

Sell every channel from one stock figure. In Linnworks, you link each marketplace’s listings to the same inventory items. An order from any channel reserves the stock for that order, and the updated level goes out to every connected channel in under 10 minutes.

If your current channels’ stock figures don’t match a shelf count, the new marketplace inherits the same error.