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Marketplaces are evolving. The age-old tradition of buying and selling which involves bargaining, paperwork and other headaches, is now slowly getting digitalized, making it easier for both buyers and sellers to get what they want at their comfort.
When we talk about the marketplace, there’s two of a kind – Single Vendor Marketplace and Multi-vendor Marketplace. A single vendor marketplace is where a single vendor/seller sell their products to several customers while in a multi-vendor, there are multiple sellers.
Picking up a marketplace is the toughest job since both have their benefits in their own manner but, surprisingly, eCommerce investors, as well as business owners today, are eyeing multi-vendor marketplace over single vendor marketplace more due to its vast number of advantages which we are going to discuss here. But first, let’s understand a bit about each marketplace.
Single Vendor Marketplace and its Benefits
A Stand-Alone Website, where only the two parties i.e. the buyer and the seller are involved, single vendor is a one to one selling. Thus, the relationship between the buyer and the seller is quite deep than those in the multi-vendor marketplace. Although there are some perks of running a single vendor marketplace like; management or orders, supplies, inventory, customers all becomes easy, administrative as well as other costs are less, you can maximize your volume leverage to achieve attractive pricing, and bargain to receive small & regular deliveries, only thing is that single vendors cannot offer a wide range of products like in multi-vendor due to the limited amount of traffic in them.
Multi-vendor Marketplace and its Benefits
In a Multi-vendor Marketplace, 3 entities are involved namely: Admin, Vendor, and Customer. Multiple sellers/vendors register to the admin’s site to sell their products luring more traffic to the site. One of the best advantages of the multivendor marketplace is a wider public and the way each of the 3 entities benefit individually.
So, shifting to multi-vendor from single is a good idea?
Looking at the success rate of both marketplaces it can be said that yes, switching to the multivendor marketplace can prove to be more beneficial. To understand that, here are the individual benefits, those who are involved in the multi-vendor marketplace gets;
For Sellers
- No more headaches or stress of taking risks. Since the admin will be the sole operator of the entire marketplace, small vendors don’t have to worry about setting it up or take the risk of business and any major loss in them. Also, they don’t have to look after managing it either.
- Global exposure. Small vendors who used to cater to the local market can get the opportunity to sell their product to a global audience.
- With multiple suppliers on board, there will never be an issue of financial loss and if one fails there’s another.
- Product’s price received from different vendors can be standardized according to their quality.
- The seller can choose from the number of suppliers and meet the customers’ demand on time.
For Suppliers
- A multi-vendor marketplace software makes it easy for suppliers to join hands with the marketplace as there won’t be any budget constraint because bigger business is guaranteed with the multi-vendor marketplace.
- A reliable platform with many fulfilling options.
For Customers
- Access to a wide range of products under one roof.
- Attractive offers, discounts from multiple vendors.
- Can get quality products at best rates in the market.
One of the biggest examples of benefitting from being single to multi is the eCommerce giant itself – Amazon. Started in 1994 as an online bookstore, Amazon adapted the multi-vendor platform and diversified to sell a vast range of products, whose success need not be described.
How is it better?
The cost of running a multi-vendor marketplace is less than owning a single one because every seller will be on its own in multi-vendor unlike in single vendor where you need to hire people to do the tasks and manage them as well as the work. Instead, you can focus all your energy on running, scaling and maintaining your website. And if you have got an efficient multi-vendor marketplace software already, then you have nothing to worry about.
How to switch?
All you need to make the major shift from a single vendor to the multi-vendor marketplace is a Magento multivendor ecommerce marketplace solution. The advanced features that come along like responsiveness and mobile-friendly design, cross-browser compatibility, mobile app support, advanced reporting and analytics, multiple payment gateways, user-friendly admin, vendor dashboards, powerful features for admins, multi-lingual, multi-currency and complete customized solution, with a Magento multi-vendor marketplace ecommerce solution from MobiCommerce will definitely do the trick.
Final Thoughts
There is no ground rule that everyone must shift from single to multi-vendor for success. It doesn’t mean that there is no scope in staying single. But, a combined effort and a common goal and do more than just individual inputs.
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