Wildberries sellers shift to own warehouses after drone strikes on logistics hubs

The figure covers sellers operating under the FBS model, in which goods are stored and dispatched from the seller's own warehouse. On Ozon, the share of such sellers rose over the same period from 63.3% to 73.1%, Kommersant reported, citing calculations by Tochka bank and data from the analytics service Mpstats.

At the same time, the share of sellers using the FBO model — storage and shipping from the marketplace's own warehouse — fell from 94.9% to 62.8% on Wildberries and from 91.5% to 66.6% on Ozon.

The figures do not indicate a complete abandonment of marketplace warehouses. A single seller can use several schemes at once, keeping part of its assortment at the platform's warehouse and part at its own. The FBS and FBO shares therefore overlap and together exceed 100%.

Wildberries confirmed growing interest in FBS but said it did not consider the shift a mass and complete move to sellers' own warehouses. Representatives of the marketplace said sellers try to combine both models depending on demand and their own logistics capacity. Ozon did not provide immediate comment.

Vasily Bumagin, founder of the Market Papa service, described the shift as mass and forced. According to him, sellers are primarily concerned about the safety of their goods. Bumagin estimated that the transition adds 20 to 100 rubles to costs per unit of goods, not counting transportation.

FBS is more expensive for sellers than marketplace warehouses. Wildberries' commission in the beauty category is 41.5% under FBO and 46.5% under FBS. Alexei Moskalenko, head of the Association of E-Commerce Representatives, added in comments to the publication that orders are delivered on average two days faster from marketplace warehouses.

The series of drone attacks on Wildberries' logistics network began on July 18 with strikes on centers in Kotovsk in the Tambov region and Elektrostal near Moscow. Seven night-shift employees were killed in Kotovsk and 25 people were injured. In Elektrostal, dozens of workers were hurt, and the death of one of them was later reported.

According to The Insider's count, 21 Wildberries facilities in 16 Russian regions and annexed Simferopol had been attacked by August 19. Their total estimated area is about 2.3 million square meters. Fourteen facilities with an area of about 1.77 million square meters sustained significant damage, after which some operations had to be moved to other sites.

Shortly before the series of strikes, Wildberries added drone attacks, shelling and explosions to its list of force majeure circumstances releasing the company from liability for lost goods. In August, the marketplace included drone attacks in voluntary order insurance, but, as The Insider found, it does not cover unordered inventory remaining in warehouses. The policy applies during delivery, storage at a pickup point and return logistics.

Entrepreneurs described payouts that covered only a small part of their losses. One seller claimed he lost 63% of his stock at the Elektrostal warehouse and received a little more than 36,500 rubles — about 2–3% of the purchase value of the destroyed goods.

The Russian government granted affected Wildberries sellers a 12-month deferral on the payment of certain taxes and insurance contributions. It applies, in particular, to entrepreneurs whose damage exceeded 5% of annual income. On-site tax inspections will also be suspended for them until the end of 2026. The list of support recipients and the size of their damage is compiled by the combined Wildberries and Russ company itself.

The attacks also forced Ozon to change its logistics model. After the first strikes, the marketplace announced it would allow sellers to place goods at more than 80,000 pickup points across Russia, effectively turning them into small warehouses. Ozon later decided to connect third-party sorting and logistics centers in 29 cities and offered sellers to send stock to warehouses in Almaty and Astana, from where orders will be delivered to Russian buyers among others.

On September 9, Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Roman Chekushov said that probably not all damaged logistics complexes should be restored. According to him, it is first necessary to understand how logistics will be restructured.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, after the first strikes on Wildberries, claimed the attacked centers were used to supply sanctioned components for the production of drones and navigation equipment. Wildberries and the Kremlin deny that the company supplies the Russian army.