As we know, e-commerce is a fairly mature market in which competition is very high. To sell online you need specific skills and above all you must always stay up to date on the changes taking place in the sector and on news.
Being updated on new channels available for sale, such as marketplaces, can make the difference between being a leader or a follower.
Being among the first to sell a specific product on a marketplace allows you to enter the channel with a higher price and to acquire customers faster and thus establish your positioning by collecting positive reviews.
What are the marketplaces to use in 2022?
The marketplaces to use depend on the product category and price positioning of your product. For example, on Amazon you can sell a bit of everything but luxury brands generally avoid this channel because it is not in line with the brand positioning. Which is not to say that there are no wealthy users on Amazon.
The Amazon marketplace
The Amazon marketplace is the first search engine in the world for products. If Google is the first search engine in the world overall and Youtube is the first search engine for videos, Amazon is the first for products.
To sell on amazon you need to be registered and pay a subscription as a seller, but there are also other commissions to pay including the commission on the sale of each individual product which is a variable percentage.
The advantage of Amazon is that it offers a FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) logistics and shipping service through which you can use stock your products at the Amazon warehouse and take advantage of Amazon's shipping services including amazon Prime.
Facebook marketplace
Facebook marketplace began as a sales platform for private Facebook users and was later transformed into Marketplace for companies. Facebook marketplace has the advantage of having a particularly high number of daily users 1.9 billion daily users, practically 1/4 of the world population.
The advantage of Facebook is also that of being integrated with the Messenger system which allows very quick communication with customers. Another interesting point in favor of Facebook are the free advertisements.
The fashion marketplaces.
- About You is one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in Europe
- Amazon Fashion
- Asos Marketplace
- Breuninger
- Farfetch
- Galeries Lafayette
- Veepee
- Zalando
We all know that one of the most purchased products online is fashion products. Numerous marketplaces have been created for this product category and even traditional online sellers, e-tailers, who previously bought at wholesale prices and resold at retail prices, have changed their business model by adding the marketplace.
This means that sellers like Yoox no longer need to have their own stock in stock but can sell products that are not physically located in their warehouses, but are in the warehouses of other sellers. To operate this sales model, the stock data, ie the quantities available for sale, needs to be synchronized practically in real time.
Among the most famous fashion marketplaces are Farfetch for luxury products, Zalando, AboutYou. But what is interesting to observe is that retailers have now begun to turn their e-commerce sites into marketplaces and thus allow their customers' brands to sell products directly through their sites. For example Breuninger in Germany, Galeries Lafayette in France, Yoox and many others.
Why is the marketplace a successful model in fashion?
The markeplace is successful in fashion because it offers customers a much wider range of products than a single-brand store. We often talk about "mix and match"Because consumers of fashion products like to create their own" look "by combining products of different brands or simply because a wider offer allows the consumer to choose the products that best suit the consumer's needs also in terms of price.
Turn your e-commerce site into a marketplace
It is possible to transform your e-commerce site into a marketplace through software that integrates with your e-commerce platform and allows a multiplicity of sellers to connect and publish their products. Among the solutions that allow you to transform your e-commerce site into a marketplace there are Mirakl which is already used today by large companies such as Decathlin, Caffefour and Macy's and Tradebyte
The business model of the marketplace
The marketplace exploits the traffic present on its site as a means to give visibility to the products and takes a commission on the sales of the products. The marketplace generally collects the transaction money and the seller collects the value of the transaction minus the fees the marketplace retains for itself.
How to manage marketplaces from an IT point of view
If you want to sell your stock on multiple channels simultaneously to maximize the sell out possibilities and you have only one warehouse (stock) or even multiple warehouses serving all channels, you need an Order Management System or other software that is able to receive sales data from marketplaces in real time and update product availability on all channels.
Let's take an example. If you have 2 pairs of black tennis shoes in size 40 in stock and you sell one on your e-commerce site and the other on the Amazon marketplace, you will have to immediately update the availability of the product bringing it to zero on both channels and on all other channels on which you are presenting the product. If you do not make this update, you run the risk of overselling and therefore not being able to fulfill the order of a possible third customer who has viewed the product on another channel.
Software to integrate marketplaces
To do this type of data synchronization there are various software on the market including: TradeByte, Channel Engine, Channel Advisor, Lengow,
Marketplace news
For updates on marketplace you can follow Pulse Marketplace
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