Online giants like Amazon, eBay, Etsy and even Walmart have done it. What do they have in common besides billions of dollars in sales? They are not your typical e-commerce sites you used to remember. They have upgraded themselves to an online marketplace powerhouse.
Long gone are the days where you sell only the products in your shop. Customers today demand low price, convenience, speed and variety. Furthermore, to overcome shrinking margins in retail, online stores are experimenting with more product lines and services that yield higher returns. They do that successfully by partnering up with 3rd party vendors through the concept called "marketplace".
A marketplace makes perfect sense and it's a win-win for you, the seller and the customer. Consider an online store that sells computers and is now looking to increase their sales. As an added service, you can start to sell related products in your vertical such as software, mobile phones or insurance. Imagine a client is shopping to replace his office computer can also buy extended warranty, add QuickBooks software and sign up for a new mobile phone with a single checkout.
As a fast growing business, you may not have the time or be able to source and hold the inventory for every product, nor would you want to because of the added risk and cost. So a good business decision may be to allow other sellers (vendors and manufacturers) to drop ship directly to your customers and you take a generous commission. Your sellers are happy because your business helps them to sell more products. Your clients are oblivious to the marketplace, but are excited because they see you carry a wider range of products and services. Your business is booming because you instantly increased your sales without spending money! There are literally tens of thousands of drop shippers and millions of products out there waiting to be listed for sale on your site. For example, you can easily find plenty of drop shippers from Doba and many other similar sites, or solicit your own partners. What are you waiting for?
Revindex Storefront 7.0 helps turns your online store into a full fledge marketplace. You can partner up with an unlimited number of sellers. Your sellers can self-manage their own products and pricing, track their sales, configure packing, shipping, handling, taxes and fulfillment. You only need to collect the payment and redistribute the money back to them. If you're serious about making more money, take your business to the next level and turn it into a marketplace!