Nowadays it is becoming a priority for all suppliers to be present online. It is not only enough to open a B2B or even B2C website, but it is also highly advantageous to be listed on marketplaces. If previously the supplier ran their business only physically now it is time to make a twist on their strategy to keep up with the changes in the world of commerce.
Ecommerce becomes more significant in our lives. On the one hand, we can mention buyers who decide to buy online more frequently than before. There are people who changed their buyer behavior so much they almost fully cover their needs by online purchases. On the other hand, there are those whose dream is to open a store. Tons of articles on the internet are about the exceptional number of people who are opening new online stores, especially dropshipping ones.
Online stores can have the role of a new hobby or a second job. If they reach a high profit regularly then this activity can become the main source of people’s revenue. Why do so many people open online stores? Because it seems to be an easy way of getting money.
Now we can ask: Why is it beneficial for suppliers to be present online and be listed on marketplaces? Because there is a high demand for products to sell thus the income the supplier can receive is higher in parallel.
Who are Online Suppliers?
Or maybe it is better to ask: Who can be an online supplier? Who are those who can be listed on marketplaces?
- Those wholesalers who run their business offline can open a B2B or B2C website as well to provide their products to a bigger audience. They have to be able to provide their product data to online resellers. Like this they become online suppliers.
- Secondly, there are manufacturers who have their own hand-made products and open an online store. They sell to customers as a retailer, but they can also start working as suppliers and provide their items to resellers.
- Thirdly, there are those retailers who have products in their online stores from big brands for example. If these are products that can be rarely or hardly available for other resellers, or it is a special case and special product range, these retailers can turn their business to be supplier business as well.
What are Online Marketplaces?
The word marketplace can refer to more things. Here we focus on those marketplaces where retailers can find products and suppliers, and can fill their online store with the chosen items easily.
Most people online use the term ‘marketplace’ for eBay, Amazon, AliExpress, or Alibaba nowadays. Usually, the products that can be found in these B2C or B2B marketplaces have cheap quality and the items’ price is low as well. This is what these sites are famous about. Moreover, as many online retailers get products to sell from these places, these items can be found in almost every second store.
What we focus on here are marketplaces where suppliers are from all over the world. These products, most of the time, are quality and more unique ones. Suppliers can reach more potential partners thanks to being listed on marketplaces. Advertizing as a supplier is not easy as it is not like an online store who promote their products to customers.
The marketplaces can belong to popular ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce. But they can stand individually too. A few directories are for example Doba, Wholesale Central, WorldWide Brands, SaleHoo, or Syncee Marketplace.
How to Make Sure Retailers will Choose You to Work With?
If you are listed on marketplaces with your products you have to know that there is a higher chance that retailers will choose you as a partner if the following conditions are provided by you:
- Retailers can see the products the supplier offers so they can browse among them.
- The wholesale price of the product is visible.
- It can be also useful if, as a help, the supplier offers a recommended markup, so a suggested retail price.
- Offer high-quality products.
- High-quality product images.
- Detailed product descriptions.
- The wholesale price is reasonable.
- The supplier provides every important and necessary information about their company and like this they help the retailers in making the big decision.
- Have a user-friendly online store where retailers can find every necessary information easily and which looks modern and cool.
- Provide great customer service, answer your current and potential partners’ answers in not longer than a few hours.
- Provide great warranty service, returns, and refunds.
Advantages of Being Listed on Marketplaces as a Supplier
For suppliers, it is one of the best decisions they can make to be listed on marketplaces. There are so many suppliers around the world who received great advantages from it as it means lots of potential sales. Not all online marketplaces and directories are the same thus you can’t find every feature in all of them. Because of this, it is not possible to talk about them in general mentioning factors that cover all services. However, in cores, we can still highlight the most important benefits.
1. More Retail Partners
By being listed on marketplaces as a supplier the greatest advantage is that you can have more retail partners and you can build your own retailer network easily. The number of them depends on the size of the directory you work on. For retailers, these directories are a great source of finding contacts for new suppliers because they can be sure that the suppliers are taken through a screening process before they got listed.
2. Take Your Already Existing Retailer Network There
Why? So you can provide the best service for your retailers and so you can make your own work easier. If you already have your own retailer network, and seeking a technical solution but you haven’t found that yet, maybe you should check marketplaces. There you can provide the same solution for all of your retailers, and manage everything in one place. Being listed on marketplaces as a private supplier is something that not all services provide a solution for. However, if you want one that has several useful features, Syncee Marketplace is a platform you should check. Feel free to work with your closed network without any responsibilities.
3. More Sales
As you run your business on the competitive market you can be aware of the fact that the most important thing in the life of a company on the market is to gain revenue. Higher and higher. This is why most of the businesses exist. By being listed on marketplaces your products will have more resellers thus you will have more sales in parallel.
4. Cost-effective Solution
If you want to have more new partners and sales, it is a wallet-friendly solution to be listed on marketplaces as a supplier. These marketplaces and directories can be free but some of them may require some charges in order for you to access their service. You don’t have to worry about how to get to new resellers, you dont have to think of how you should target retailers with ads or anything. It is a place where retailers gather too, and it almost doesn’t cost anything to you.
5. Time-efficient Solution
If your products are listed on marketplaces all you have to do is wait. Once you uploaded your company profile and your products, the system should update your constantly updating product data in that platform. Yes, there will be a few things you have to manage, like being in contact with your retailers, and if you have changes in your basic company information you have to modify them. However, in general you just have to wait for new partners to come. As it was mentioned previously, you don’t have to worry about how you could get to new businesses all the time. You are already on the front line.
6. No Inventory
In most online marketplaces companies work with the dropshipping business model which is today’s most popular model in ecommerce. This is why you should also consider providing this service if you are listed on marketplaces. What is it about briefly? You have to give your product data to online retailers in a datafeed file for example, so they can fill their online store.
The retailer will not have physical inventory, will not buy stock from you in advance. When they receive an order request from a customer, it will be forwarded to you, and then you, the supplier will be the one who will ship the product directly to the customer. You will manage products one-by-one. For you it will be the same process as what happens between retailers and their customers originally.
7. Everything is In One Place
Being listed on marketplaces means you get a full service that covers many of your needs regarding managing processes as for the work with resellers. These are platforms where retailers can not only find you in a never-ending list, but they can also upload-update the product data into their online store. You can contact each other, manage orders, make several useful settings, and you can be sure everything is running on a safe platform where you can have trust in the team behind it, and can ask for help anytime about your listing, settings or about resellers.
8. Auto Orders
To continue the lineup of why it is useful to be listed on marketplaces online, we should’t forget to mention order management. It is advantegous for both the retailers and suppliers. They can see all of their orders that arrived via those resellers who are from these marketplaces in one place. If the system has this feature, the process will be automatized as well. The retailer doesn’t have to look for the certain products on the supplier’s store, or they do not have to manage orders via email. If the supplier can offer such a solution (thanks to these marketplaces), it is more likely that retailers will choose them.
9. Automated Product Uploads & Updates
Another key reason of why it is beneficial to be listed on marketplaces is that you do not have to worry about how to provide your product data to retailers and how to make sure it will be always up-to-date for each partner all the time. Most marketplaces have a solution for it. You have to provide them your product data, and then in each of your retailers’ store the data will be constantly updated automatically. It is a huge benefit that you can offer an automatized solution to retailers through these marketplaces. Like this, retailers don’t have to manually update the product price and inventory quantity changes for example.
10. Direct Integration From Your Online Store
If you are running your online store on ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, Jumpseller or BigCommerce just to mention a few, no datafeed file is needed to be listed on marketplaces with your products. There are many systems that provide you a solution for integration your product data directly from your online store, and managing the product data changes as well daily, automatically. So for example if a product’s price or inventory quantity changes in your online store, it will change in your resellers’ store as well. You just have to make sure to have up-to-date products in your online store.
Drawbacks of Being Listed on Marketplaces as a Supplier
Drawbacks of being listed on marketplaces as a supplier can differ from which particular directory we are talking about. Nevertheless, there are not many drawbacks that can be mentioned at this point, especially not in general. Choosing to be listed on marketplaces with your B2B company is always worth it as without making much effort, you can have more new partners and can gain more income.
The disadvantages below do not apply to every marketplace but when you are deciding whether to be a part of a certain network it is worth examining the factors below relating to the chosen service .
1. Making Compromises
If you are looking for options to be listed on marketplaces it can happen that you cannot find a service that covers all of your needs and requirements completely. This is why you have to look around in the market while you find a service at which you say you are ready to make compromises with. You have to accept that these services cannot always provide everything that would be needed for you. However, do not forget, if you have something in mind you would need, it always worth asking the service’s support team, as it is possible that they can find a solution for you.
2. Anyone Can be Your Reseller & You Can’t Control Sales
If you are listed on marketplaces as a supplier any retailers can see your products, and can add your items to their online store. Of course there are systems which provide you a solution so you can reject retailers who you think wouldn’t be suitable partners for you. You can’t fully vet if the reseller is reliable or not, will disappear or not, and how they will manage their business.
You also cannot control sales. Even if a retailer is selling your products, it is not sure you will get sales from them. Why? Because receiving orders depends on e.g. the retailer’s marketing activities, or how they structured their online store, if they look completely beginners or even unreliable in customers’ eyes. You can have lots of resellers from marketplaces but the number of orders and the amount of income are unpredictable.
3. You Cannot Serve Every Online Retailer
If you are listed on marketplaces, you cannot provide your product data to any online retailers. The directory probably has a solution for using their service on only a few ecommerce platforms. Thus only those retailers can find you and manage your products who run their online store on those ecommerce platforms (such as Shopify) that the marketplace supports.
How to be Listed on Marketplaces?
There are more ways of how you can be listed on marketplaces with your products as a supplier. It is also something that depends on the system you wish to join. However, there are not way too many options of how it is possible to be done, so we can talk about it in general.
Obviously, you need to register to the website, and you need to apply all of the required company information. You have to provide your shipping details as well, like prices and shipping time. Make sure you have a company description that describes your service well and what is helpful enough for retailers to be able to decide if they like what you offer. You may need to have a PayPal account so the order management can be done properly.
There are more potential ways of the product integration can be done so you can be listed on marketplaces.
- direct product data integration from the online store
- using a product data feed file (in formats like for example CSV, XML, XLS(X), JSON or TXT, and via sources for example URL, FTP, Google Drive or Docs, Dropbox, API, SOAP)
- manual product upload
Have You Heard of Syncee Marketplace Before?
Syncee is a B2B platform for dropshippers, retailers and suppliers. It offers two main solution to retailers, the Syncee Marketplace and the Syncee DataFeed Manager. Syncee Marketplace is where millions of products can be found from hundreds of vendors from all over the world. The onboarding is super easy, and being listed is also completely free for suppliers. Are you interested in being listed on marketplaces? Give a try to this opportunity! Join the community of thousands of merchants, and get more sales easily!
