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MenuHow do I start a liquidation marketplace business?
It's where retailers can list their surplus inventory and get biddings/offers from other businesses or individuals. How do I get started and is a shopify website good enough to build this?
Answers
Two sided marketplaces are a very common type of MVP to build. Using no code (shopify, wordpress, bubble) can get you some traction and gets you some amount of painted doors (someone knocks on the door, but it's not real, at least you know how many people knocked).
This can work for a month or two, but it is not technically defensible, and if your idea succeeds, most of this work will have to be discarded. You want to validate cheaply, but you can do this with a MVP that is hyper focused.
Check out some more of my thoughts on no code platforms:
https://mvpengineer.com/no-code-platforms-worth-it/
and minimizing your MVP:
https://mvpengineer.com/building-tech-demos-for-micro-components-not-a-full-user-experience/
1- Start with a small capital to understand the market
2- Find your customers' needs
3- Shopify is an excellent website for sale and it is very easy for you, but you must know how to work on it
4- Choose a main product and the rest of the products are additional and expand into the main product, for example (clothing).
5- Make a small profit margin and rely on expanding the customer base
Rather than shopify, you can use wordpress as you will have control over full source code:
- Go to http://wordpress.org/ and download the WordPress Marketplace plugin.
- Install the plugin and activate it.
- Click on "Add New" in the marketplace menu and input the following details:
- Name: Your marketplace name
- Category: Mobile apps
- Subcategory: Apps
- Upload a .zip file of your app.
- Click on "Create My Store Now!"
If you know shopify, then yes. Use whatever can get you there fastest to present something to your first users. Once you build the traction you're after, look towards setting up a better tech solution that serves user needs with a clean user experience.
B2B marketplaces are inherently different, but not more complex to market. To start, you might look into buying some of that inventory yourself or doing things manually for a bit to evaluate demand.
Related Questions
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When working on a double-sided marketplace how do you work out cost of customer acquisition?
I'm the CTO of https://3dagogo.com a marketplace of proven to print 3D designs. We look at the two sides differently. There's not a single customer. In our case you have designers and purchasers ( sometimes the same person can be both ). Cost and methods for acquiring designers are very different than those to attract purchasers. I would clearly separate the sides and come up with separate cost structures. In my opinion when you're looking at the marketplace from the purchaser perspective, the other side's acquisition costs can be seen as fixed marketing costs.DA
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What are the profit margins for high end home decor and furniture?
Hone decor / furniture industry is one of the highest profit promising industry today. The profit margins on home decor ranges from 20% - 45% depend on the price of the product. If you're looking to get quickly popular, I suggest you start with the online store and promote it on offline as well. Keep the margins low initially so that you can attract more buyers. As the business grows, reinvest the amount back on the business so that you can stock more varieties. All the very best.KK
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What's the best platform to build a e-bookstore?
I think a natural choice is large provides like Amazon. However, if you want to sell eBooks on your own and maintain all of the revenue, then WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads would make excellent options. Both software packages are WordPress plugins and they make it very easy to deploy an e-commerce store for digital goods. Both plugins have strong development teams behind them and they have a slew of independent freelancers who can offer assistance if needed. I've used WooCommerce myself for multiple years and we've deployed many WordPress websites that use it. It has hundreds of extensions you can add on to it for maximizing the potential.RG
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Holding funds in a 2-sided marketplace?
Check out https://www.balancedpayments.com/ They are made for marketplaces. Airbnb CEO among others invested in them and they have some of the best pricing/payout fees. Also some good info on http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/2013/10/08/online-marketplaces-are-hard/ One of Balanced Payments co-founders is writing this blog series on marketplaces.MA
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What support software do most marketplace startups use? Is it custom, or a SaaS product like Zendesk, Desk.com or Uservoice
Your support software should cater to your needs, depending on how your business operates. Fiver uses Vanilla forum and Zendesk. Thumbtack uses Zendesk. Not sure about AirBNB, their help center seems to be custom. Depending on how well funded your are, I would recommend starting with a free plan with one of the help desk SaaS products, or even using open source ticketing platform. Then, as your needs grow and you need integration with your marketplace, there's no reason you can't scale and migrate.VN
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