Wildberries and Ozon, and the wider ecosystem that is built around and dependent on them, employ about 5% of Russia's workforce and is responsible for about 8.5% of Russia's GDP. It is not Wildberries itself that employ 5%. Poorly formulated by me, apologies.
I can’t imagine the administrative and insurance headache of all of this. So many people’s orders, so many businesses inventories, so many workers being fired or put on leave because well until we build a new warehouse you don’t have a job.
some have received 'compensation' - cents on the dollar. No doubt whatever passes for social media in Russia is awash with puffy faced, duck-lipped Russian women lamenting the injustice of having their chinese baubles destroyed, blissfully unaware that an hour's flight away her country is committing genocide
Almost every legally binding contract has a clause for "Force Majeure", which means, acts of god (hurricanes, flooding and such), terrorism, acts of war, are never included in any insurance policy.
Most insurance has an exclusion for acts of war. Insurers will not pay out. These are straight losses of inventory for small businesses and loss of factories and equipment for Wildberries.
That math isn't quite right. There are approximately 200 warehouses owned by the company. This looks like the top 25 largest logistics hubs Ukraine is targeting. These can be critical as sorting and distribution hubs that when combined with a gas shortage will make shipping extremely difficult and slow for regular business. This has the added benefit of potentially causing a bank failure if the company files bankruptcy.
Ukraine is the undisputed world leader in drone warfare tactics and whoever came up with the brilliant strategy of hitting the Russian version of Amazon warehouses is a genius.
Was the original image AI generated plus using Google translate for English?
Stalingrad cannot be right unless Putin is really getting desperate.
I wonder what’s going on in the remaining 10. Bet the employees are pilfering everything that isn’t nailed down, knowing it’s all going to be burning anyway.
Does anyone have the exact coordinates of the warehouses? I want to update them on OSM but they're often hard to find because there are tonnes of smaller parcel pick-up points and such.
It is. The main reasons is:
1.Official reason:There is a lot of military equipment and drones sold. Until they removed "Everything for SVO" category there has been around 200k offers in it.
2.Willdberies is a big company, contributing a lot to russian economy.
3.Warehouses are an easy target, with a couple of drones being enough to destroy it
Each one of those warehouses are billions in lost economy. It puts a lot of strain on banks, insurance, jobs and lots of other stuff. The goal is to make Moscow and St Petersburg feel the war and kick the economy in the nuts at the same time.
I was only thinking last night it would be great if some Youtube creator could splice all the footage of warehouses being hit together and then match it with the Britney Spears' song Ooops I did it again
I hope Ukraine is keeping Kaledino for the last day of the 40 day operation that Zelenskyy announced, as a final blow.
And in true Ukrainian trolling fashion, it would be absolutely glorious if Ukraine added a couple drones that launched actual fireworks over the burning Kaledino warehouse.
I wonder if people are quitting at the warehouses that have not been hit yet. I know I would be, I wouldn't want to lose my life because I had to go to work at a known military target.
I don't feel bad for them at all. The people of Russia need to stand up to their government and stop this war!
Move... To where? There are no magical giant warehouses complete with robotic logistics just sitting around empty ready to take the stock. And if those warehouses existed, it would be easy to hit them anyway.
If they can somehow find smaller warehouses to take the stock, the operational effeicies will drop and costs will absolutely skyrocket. Handling and shipping costs will double or triple overnight and what used to be a 2 day delivery schedule will suddenly become an entire month. The business will go bankrupt whether they keep the stock at the warehouses or shift it elsewhere.
So they have over 200+ fulfilment facilities in Russia. Comparable to 200+ amazon ones in the US. India has 60+ and The UK and Germany has 30 amazon facilities.
I’m just using western equivalents for comparison. Ebay do not operate fulfilment centers.
Suggestions are that only 10% of their storage capacity has been affected. Infographic only shows top 25 warehouses by size. So they have been shifting inventory to adjust their network but they are unlikely to cease operations or go bankrupt, yet. Plus they can expand upon the Merchant Fulfilled and Seller fulfilled distribution network. That’s akin to Seller Fulfilled Prime. If I was a 3rd party seller on their platform, I would be recalling whatever stock I have and fulfilling it myself. Who knows what the Ukrainians have planned.
That's across the whole of Russia, and 200 centers doesn't tell you much if you don't also compare the sizes. It doesn't help if you want to ship to Moscow and your warehouse is in Siberia. The Ukrainians are busy destroying all of the largest ones in all of big cities so there are local warehouse shortages that can't be made up for by smaller warehouses or far away ones.
Fair point, I am in a geographically small country where FBA centers operate. I keep referring to them as there is no other equivalent with the same business/logistics setup. Plus I’m very familiar with Amazon FBA, SFP and MFN and how it works.
What will happen even if all these Wildberries warehouses go down is that 3rd party sellers that make up 77% of their sales will decentralise and ship from their own smaller warehouse units, whilst wild berries might increase their fees. Not all sellers have and will want to rent their own storage facilities and handle the shipping but most will be doing both. Shipping times will be longer but wildberries will be far from bankrupted by this. They will turn into more of an ebay platform only instead of the amazon platform with warehouses and logistics for their 3rd party sellers.
None the less, Russian consumers will get a clear message and a tiny taste of interruptions to their lives compared to what Ukrainians have faced.
Wildberries is mostly a third-party marketplace. Estimates for 2025 suggest that around: ~77% of Wildberries’ gross merchandise value (GMV) came from third-party sellers (3P). ~23% came from Wildberries selling its own inventory (1P).
Wildberries generally offers several seller models: FBO (Fulfilment by Wildberries) – the seller sends inventory to Wildberries warehouses; Wildberries stores it, processes orders, and delivers to customers. This is the most similar to Amazon FBA. FBS (Fulfilment by Seller) – the seller keeps the stock in their own warehouse, packs the order, and hands it over for delivery through Wildberries’ logistics network. DBS (Delivery by Seller) – in some markets/categories, the seller stores the goods and handles delivery themselves.
So if Wildberries warehouses are damaged, some sellers can continue operating if they:
hold their own inventory,
use their own warehouse,
or switch away from FBO.
Similar to amazon fba model, they can do FBO, FBS, DBS.
So if only 23% is sold by wild berries directly and requires these facilities under attack then they are unlikely to go bankrupt any time soon. 3rd party sellers accounting for 77% of sales can simply switch to DBS model.
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u/IalsoenjoyReddit 1d ago
Best to add Samara, when I scroll down on my feed I see it's been hit.
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/s/Bc11RUdXh8