Every seller or merchant has a separate shop inside a multivendor system which he is free to run as he likes. The platform owner only bothers with order processing, tracking and payments where they are due.
Some of the biggest ecommerce brands have evolved from the multi vendor ecommerce model. Most distinguished and globally known are;
Amazon
The largest online retailer doesn’t need an introduction. It started in 1994 as an online bookstore but diversified to sell vast range of products. The ecommerce giant follows the marketplace model.
Website – www.amazon.com
Alibaba
The China based business-to-business portal is one of the biggest ecommerce players in the world. It is where wholesalers and resellers go to buy products in bulk and at discounted price. In year 2012, two portals owned by Alibaba Group managed $170 billion in sales, far more than Ebay and Amazon taken together.
Website – www.alibaba.com
www.flipkart.com is the most popular ecommerce brand in India and has recently shifted to the multi vendor model, is giving a hard time to international players like Ebay in creating a market in the second biggest economy in the world.
Ecommerce enthusiasts have become more interested in virtual marketplace software rather than online shop builders. Below are the reasons for the marketplace shift;
1. Vast range of products
The products sold on a multi vendor store are featured by a number of vendors. Any ecommerce store that provides a huge variety of products is bound to easily generate traffic and sales. If Ebay and Etsy were to source all the products from one vendor, do you think they would have been able to generate as much sales as they do now?
2. It takes away half the headache
Taking care of logistics, inventories, product additions & upgrades, pricing and various other details that comes with running an online store require humungous efforts. Multi vendor store shifts these necessary evils to individual merchants. Because sellers have to take care of their own store only, it doesn’t remain an uphill task. So, this makes multivendor shopping cart a win-win business equation.
3. Lesser expenses
Because every seller will be managing his shop on their own, you don’t need to hire people to do it. Your team can spend more time on answering critical questions related to scaling and marketing. With an experienced development team by your side, you can drastically bring down website maintenance related expenses.
4. No need to maintain inventory
Warehousing and human resource related costs can break the back of any ecommerce startup. Starting a multi vendor store will not let that happen as sellers will take care of inventory related complications.
