Material Retail Dumps

Welcome to the Material Retail Dumps podcast. If you've listened to us before, thanks so much for coming back. If it's your first time listening, welcome Material Retail Dumps is a short form podcast with brief but valuable content for independent retailers. As business owners, we don't have time for a 30 minute lesson with a ton of banter, so we get straight to the meat of the topic and aim to give you actionable information that will help you optimize your retail operation and make more money every day. Welcome to Material Retail Dumps, episode 49. In this episode, we're gonna talk about online marketplaces and why you as a retailer should be selling on them. We're gonna talk about what online marketplace is. Give some examples of a few talk about how they work and discuss why you should be selling on online. So, an online marketplace is a website or an app where multiple vendors offer goods or services for sale to consumers.

In our case, as independent retailers. An online marketplace is a place where many boutiques and retailers and sellers come online to put their inventory to sell to new customers. So some examples of online marketplaces are Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, and you know, there's many more. Um, there are big marketplaces in small marketplaces. Marketplace that we run is shop teaks.com. If you haven't heard of shop tes.com, definitely recommend checking it out. You know, some marketplaces are built for specific customers and specific sellers. Some marketplaces are built for a broad amount of sellers, but a very specific customer and vice versa. So, for example, Etsy, you can only sell on Etsy if you hand make your goods, but they sell a ton of items, so they have customers from all walks of life. Um, a marketplace like eBay has tons of different items on it, and you know, you have sellers that are, you know, a random person in their house selling an old book, and then you have businesses that are selling on eBay.

Um, and anybody could be a customer on eBay. Then you have marketplaces like Shop Teaks who are going after a very specific seller and also a very specific buyer. So if you fall into that category of seller, you're gonna have a better time selling there than other marketplaces. And if you fall into that category of buyer, you will find items that you're looking for. So, tis, for example, is a fashion focused marketplace that looks for independent retailers with brick and mortar stores to post product on that marketplace. Now that we understand what a marketplace is, and we gave some examples of marketplaces, let's talk about how they work. So it's really simple. You just put up your product that you have in store, you'll put up the images description, and, and you set your pricing and all good stuff like that. And some marketplaces will actually sync with your p o s, um, or your website. So you can easily import, um, all your products or some marketplaces, you know, ask you to do them manually one by one. Now every marketplace is a little bit different, but most marketplaces work on a commission model where you pay when you sell something. A lot of

Marketplaces have, you know, listing fees or membership fees or startup fees or things like that. But generally speaking, the marketplace makes their money from commissions. It's, it's a pretty simple partnership. You are expected to handle the inventory and the marketplace expected to drive traffic to the marketplace, handle all the technology, um, and all the payments and stuff like that. Generally, you'll, you know, pay a commission. The marketplace will cover things like credit card fees, discounts, sometimes shipping or marketing costs. Marketplaces will handle the customer service for you, and it's just a simple, fun relationship. So let's talk about why you should be selling in marketplaces. So as a retailer with a store, you know, you have two primary selling channels. Usually you have your physical store and you have your website. And these selling channels are, you know, for your customer, you work hard to get that customer.

You pay rent to be on a nice street, you have a website, you're sending your customers there, maybe you do some email marketing and things like that, you know, but you have to work to get customers, and it's expensive to work for your customers, or time consuming. And all your expenses are, you know, somewhat fixed, right? So you have your rent, you payroll, you have your inventory, even though it's not an expense, it's a big cashflow sucker, and you have all those things. They don't necessarily change. If you sell market on a marketplace, you have all these, all this inventory that if you were to post on a marketplace, you wouldn't be increasing your expenses. You could just increase your sales. Now all of a sudden, the same amount of expenses, a very similar amount of work, and you're making some extra money. Also, it's extremely important to understand that when you put your products in a marketplace, generally speaking, you're gonna get customers that you would've never found before.

So if I put my product on a marketplace like Amazon, someone from across the world or across the country will buy it from me. I would've never found that shopper before. And yes, I pay a commission, but you know what, who cares? Who cares to pay a commission? It's just a little bit. It's an extra sale that you're getting. That commission does cover some expenses, and you wouldn't have had that sale otherwise. So marketplaces can be really great tools to just broaden your horizon and get more eyeballs on your product. Now, hopefully have a decent understanding of what an online marketplace is. Gave some examples of online marketplaces and why you should be selling on a marketplace. If you're not selling on any marketplaces yet, I definitely recommend starting to selling marketplaces right away. And if you are selling on marketplaces, I try to sell a couple more. Thank you so much for listening and looking forward to the next episode.