Cdiscount - conquering the French market 

The third largest e-commerce platform on the French market takes its first steps with Polish sellers! 

Want to expand your reach and enter a whole new market? No problem, we can help with everything! Cdiscount is a marketplace with nearly 10 million active buyers that has been conquering France since 1998. The platform is friendly to new sellers, and the organised and tireless Support will support you through any difficulties along the way in developing your shop. In addition, Cdiscount does not charge you any fees in the event of cancellation, so you never lose anything!  

When registering with Cdiscount, you do not have to worry about catalogue limits or other additional costs - the platform only charges a commission and a monthly subscription, which, as mentioned, can be cancelled at any time. It is also possible to integrate with various sales control systems, such as the popular Base, formerly known as Baselinker. 

Already have your shop on Cdiscount, but don't know how to start selling? 

• The platform is powered by the Octopia system, so almost the entire process of creating and managing offers is done with its help. The entire interface is available in three languages: French, Spanish and English.  

• The products first need to be created in Octopia, and only then can an offer for the product be created in Cdiscount. To do this, we actually have two options. 

First option - traditional form 

If the products are yours and no one has ever displayed them on Octopia-controlled platforms, you have to create them yourself. To do this we need to obtain a creation template for the relevant product category. Under „Products” -> „Create products in bulk” (see image below - point I) we can generate a spreadsheet file. We fill in all the parameters and then return the finished file to the same place from which we downloaded it. 

Once the products have been created without any errors, we can proceed to create an offer for Cdiscount. We can find out about the acceptance or rejection of a product from the tab „Reports” -> „Report on the creation or modification of your products” (see image - point II).
  

If our products have been successfully incorporated into the database, we should create an offer for them. To do this, we download a template from the „Products” tab -> „Sell products in bulk”, fill it in and then upload the finished file. After a few minutes, under „Products” -> „Catalog Management -> ”Catalog Management„ tab, the newly added products should appear (the image below shows this tab). The offer creation process can be followed in the reports tab, which we mentioned earlier. Errors of offers can be found under ”Report on the creation and update of your offers". 

The second option - with the help of an integration system, for example Base  

This method definitely saves us time when issuing, but it is worth mentioning that, in the case of Baselinker, it is still in the testing phase. Our integration system should decide on its own whether the product was already available in the Octopia database - in either case, however, the listing process is the same. In this mode, both the creation of the product and the listing happen at the same time. No files are downloaded and possible errors can be previewed in both the Octopia reports tab and in „Manage offers” in Base. 

What to look out for when creating products? 

First of all, Cdiscount is sensitive to titles and descriptions. Each of your products should be unique, so if you try to duplicate an item and give it the same title, it will be rejected. The platform values creativity and recognition, so it is advisable to refer directly to the brand in the titles. 

Cdiscount offers three descriptive spaces for your product: a short description (I), a marketing description (II) and a table of parameters (III). 

• W brief description there should be key information and an incentive for the customer - two/three sentences are enough (see images below - points marked I). 

• Marketing description is a proper description, in which we include all the basic information about the product (see photos - points marked II). The platform severely restricts standard formatting, so the description should be clean, without tables, photos or fancy bullet points. It is possible to create a far more inviting description, but this is done using a different system, which can only be accessed by applying to Cdiscount Support. It allows the implementation of images, paragraphs, headings, tables and modules. Few retailers use it, and it is completely free and available to everyone. It will definitely make your offer more attractive! 

• Technical specifications are presented in the form of tables, the data of which should be meticulously filled in (see photos - points marked III). This is particularly important when creating variants. 

Creating an offer - what you need to know 

As Cdiscount is a French platform, it is worth paying attention to the DEA and Eco Part tax - it concerns mainly the environmental performance of our product. When filling in the various fields, we can also come across a really wide range of logistics modes. Before making an offer, we should specify which delivery methods we would like to use and also agree on their costs (tab „Your delivery modes and areas” in the settings). 

How do the variants work? 

Unfortunately, Cdiscount limits the creation of variants to individual categories. This is unlikely to be possible from our integrator panel, but when creating products from a file, we have the option to create variant groups. When downloading a template for a category, some of them have special fields dedicated to variants (for example, shirt sizes or colours). If we do not see a variant tab, the category most likely does not have one. However, this is not a lost cause, because in such situations it is sufficient to request assistance from Support, who will combine the products we have selected into a variant group at the seller's request. 

Is it worth starting to sell on Cdiscount? 

In our opinion, the platform has great potential and will undoubtedly bring many fruitful benefits. Our experience with the French market is constantly enriching, but we can already proudly say that Cdiscount was our shot in the arm! 

Author: Nikola - bTOP Graphic Designer
Date of publication: 12.06.2025r.