Recommend a multi vendor marketplace platform please

[Orangutan Amy]

Hi all!

I am looking for a platform to build my multi-vendor marketplace and hoping you guys can make some recommendations. It has to be easy to use with everything in one place as I don't have the time or technical skill to be building anything myself or navigating complicated add-ons etc...

I would also prefer the ability for payment to go directly to my vendors (via a single point of checkout) minus commission.

Thanks
Amy

 

[fisicx]

That's a pretty vague description. Do you want something like an eBay or Amazon clone?

 

[Mr D]

Sounds like a big project. Have you got quotes from any of the larger website building companies? They'll know what platforms can work with such a project.

Last one of these I heard about was a million plus project - thats excluding the marketing which the owner was looking to raise funds to do.

 

[Orangutan Amy]

That's a pretty vague description. Do you want something like an eBay or Amazon clone?

Yes along those lines, probably more like Etsy, I know CS cart, Shopify and others do a multi vendor option for example but just looking for recommendations before I commit

 

[Orangutan Amy]

Sounds like a big project. Have you got quotes from any of the larger website building companies? They'll know what platforms can work with such a project.

Last one of these I heard about was a million plus project - thats excluding the marketing which the owner was looking to raise funds to do.

Thanks for your reply. I'm not looking for a bespoke build, rather a pre-existing platform I can customise like Shopify. Apologies, my OP was clearly vague

 

[Paul Carmen]

Most web/ecommerce platforms have integrations, plug-ins or 3rd party bolt-ons for alternative sales channels; e.g. WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento etc.

There are also 3rd party sales platforms and feeds like Volo that exist specifically to push data to different sources like Amazon, eBay etc from websites.

Essentially this isn't about the platform, its about the specification you require, all have strengths and weaknesses depending on what you want to do.

This seems like an odd post looking at your areas of business. You do really need a bespoke build and setup to have any chance of making this work well; e.g. you need to list all the channels you intend to sell on, what other ecommerce functionality you need, plus are there other requirements like product management. Any advice or recommendation would be a pure guess without a detailed spec.

You also need to think about how you're marketing this business, is it all on 3rd party channels via content/SEO/sales velocity optimisation, or do you intend to drive traffic to the website via PPC or Google Shopping? If so, you may need other functionality, like a Google Merchant Centre feed.

You really need to do this the other way around, setting out your sales channels and marketing goals, with research undertaken to produce a proper spec, this will then let you cost and work out how to build the website platform.

 

[Orangutan Amy]

Most web/ecommerce platforms have integrations, plug-ins or 3rd party bolt-ons for alternative sales channels; e.g. WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento etc.

There are also 3rd party sales platforms and feeds like Volo that exist specifically to push data to different sources like Amazon, eBay etc from websites.

Essentially this isn't about the platform, its about the specification you require, all have strengths and weaknesses depending on what you want to do.

This seems like an odd post looking at your areas of business. You do really need a bespoke build and setup to have any chance of making this work well; e.g. you need to list all the channels you intend to sell on, what other ecommerce functionality you need, plus are there other requirements like product management. Any advice or recommendation would be a pure guess without a detailed spec.

You also need to think about how you're marketing this business, is it all on 3rd party channels via content/SEO/sales velocity optimisation, or do you intend to drive traffic to the website via PPC or Google Shopping? If so, you may need other functionality, like a Google Merchant Centre feed.

You really need to do this the other way around, setting out your sales channels and marketing goals, with research undertaken to produce a proper spec, this will then let you cost and work out how to built the website platform.

Thanks for your advice Paul, it's for a new business not connected to my area.

 

[Orangutan Amy]

Some further info because I realise my OP was light on it:
- looking for something similar to Etsy
- vendors will add and manage their own product listings
- the marketplace will be the sole selling channel
- traffic will be driven to the marketplace primarily via PPC ads and email campaign

 

[Paul Carmen]

Some further info because I realise my OP was light on it:
- looking for something similar to Etsy
- vendors will add and manage their own product listings
- the marketplace will be the sole selling channel
- traffic will be driven to the marketplace primarily via PPC ads and email campaign

Ah, I see now.

This is a whole other ball game, as I don't think what you're looking for really exists (unless you sell on Etsy instead), you'll probably need to build a platform here, not push products onto an existing one.

This definitely sounds like a bespoke build, you need a decent resilient website platform and great UX/functionality to keep people on the site. You also need a process to attract and sign up vendors and buyers.

It's much more complex than this now though; this requires proper market, customer and competitor research to see if its even viable; e.g. what's the niche, who are the competitors, what's your solution and why is it better for customers, plus what SEO and PPC budget is required to attract enough vendor and buyer traffic to make this work. Once you've done this you will have some idea if the ROI even stacks up.

This is very much a research led project before you get anywhere near the build...

 

[fisicx]

I agree. This isn’t anything you can bolt on an existing platform. You might be able to use an e-commerce application as the base but just about everything you want will be bespoke.

I worked on a multivendor platform a while back. They spent over £20K and then a whole lot more on marketing. Still didn’t survive as they just couldn’t get enough vendors to sign up. And without listings nobody wanted to visit.

 

[Orangutan Amy]

I worked on a multivendor platform a while back. They spent over £20K and then a whole lot more on marketing. Still didn’t survive as they just couldn’t get enough vendors to sign up. And without listings nobody wanted to visit.

That's cheery

OK guys I have seen that what I want definitely exists, it may be that I am just rubbish at articulating myself. Take a look at Jungleworks or Shuup for example.

This is going to be bootstrapped, no large sum available for up front investment and I have done the research. I've started a small but successful ecommerce store in the past this way but the multi vendor aspect means I can't use the same platform provider. Because of funds and timescale for this a bespoke build isn't an option sadly.

 

[Paul Carmen]

That's cheery

OK guys I have seen that what I want definitely exists, it may be that I am just rubbish at articulating myself. Take a look at Jungleworks or Shuup for example.

This is going to be bootstrapped, no large sum available for up front investment and I have done the research. I've started a small but successful ecommerce store in the past this way but the multi vendor aspect means I can't use the same platform provider. Because of funds and timescale for this a bespoke build isn't an option sadly.

It's very niche, but both maybe good, I've no experience of them, nor the time to investigate unfortunately. We build out using open source and bespoke for clients generally, as there are always too many limitations in our experience with these type of platforms as you grow.

We've moved a couple of clients away from other big platforms like these, as they essentially become a bottleneck when you want any custom functionality. This is because they develop based on their roadmap and revenue drivers, not yours.

The one thing that looks worrying straight off is the costs, on Jungleworks you're at $269 per month plus for the full feature set and on Shuup $299 to way more, both of which make them expensive before you've started building anything...

I wish you good luck, as the market/customer positioning, business model and marketing plan are key to making this type of project work.

 

[Orangutan Amy]

It's very niche, but both maybe good, I've no experience of them, nor the time to investigate unfortunately. We build out using open source and bespoke for clients generally, as there are always too many limitations in our experience with these type of platforms as you grow.

We've moved a couple of clients away from other big platforms like these, as they essentially become a bottleneck when you want any custom functionality. This is because they develop based on their roadmap and revenue drivers, not yours.

The one thing that looks worrying straight off is the costs, on Jungleworks you're at $269 per month plus for the full feature set and on Shuup $299 to way more, both of which make them expensive before you've started building anything...

I wish you good luck, as the market/customer positioning, business model and marketing plan are key to making this type of project work.

Thanks for the comments Paul, much appreciated

 

[LanceUk]

I have no idea of multi-vendor marketplace platforms, but a googlesearch of open source multi vendor marketplace software gave me this: https://hackernoon.com/10-best-multivendor-marketplace-software-and-scripts-2020-edition-389f3yrv.

Not sure if all or any meet your needs, but, unless you pay a consultant to help, it will be a case of working out all your criteria (including hosted, SaaS, self-hosted, etc) and identifying the best one to meet your needs. As Paul mentions, scalability and ability to customise/grow the platform (or ease to migrate to other platforms) as the business grows should also be a key consideration...

 

[intheTRADE]

Have a look at www.sharetribe.com as they do exactly what you are looking for

Building something like what you need on there is the easy part - attracting enough vendors and traffic is the difficulty

 

[apricot]

I looked for it so long and I tried quite few but I havent been happy with any of them. I met one of the Top Amazon Seller in one of the conferance and I asked him to software he uses, he said they have created their own software internally and manage everything inhouse.( Hence the reason, their turnover was £20m pa)

 

[Orangutan Amy]

Thanks everyone for your comments, seems I have some research to do!

 

[Mr D]

OnBuy appear to be doing what you want to do.
After 4 years they are growing well - but most people appear unaware of them still.

Nice site for sales but nowhere near ebay or amazon. And apparently spending millions on marketing.

Problem every multi vendor site has is to attract vendors you need customers. To attract customers you need vendors.
The marketing budget is effectively far higher because of the two very different groups the site has to market to.

Some sites manage to get a little traction. There's a fair amount of competition.
Tamebay has a document of 50 3rd party sites that sellers can use - so you'd have at least 50 competitors unless you were niche.

 

[Orangutan Amy]

OnBuy appear to be doing what you want to do.
After 4 years they are growing well - but most people appear unaware of them still.

Nice site for sales but nowhere near ebay or amazon. And apparently spending millions on marketing.

Problem every multi vendor site has is to attract vendors you need customers. To attract customers you need vendors.
The marketing budget is effectively far higher because of the two very different groups the site has to market to.

Some sites manage to get a little traction. There's a fair amount of competition.
Tamebay has a document of 50 3rd party sites that sellers can use - so you'd have at least 50 competitors unless you were niche.

Thanks Mr D, will check it out! What I have planned is very niche so I'll be able to focus my marketing efforts.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Interesting and relevant topic for me!

I have been playing with this WP template/collection.

I am also looking at Shuup, but have no experience in python/django, so may have to look at something else.

 

[Underline Digital]

Have you looked at woocommerce & dokan?