The festive season is fast upon us and, up and down the country, retailers of all stripes and sizes are devoutly hoping for a serious surge in sales. November and December have long been the biggest months of the year, courtesy of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the traditional Christmas rush.
But this year the spending may be a tad more restrained than it was in seasons past. Interest rates have risen seven times in as many months and inflation is at its highest level since 1990. As a result, many Australians are feeling the pinch, with one in five reporting feelings of financial stress in the previous 90 days, according to NAB research from August 2022.
That doesn’t augur well for retailers that rely on festive season spending to shore up their balance sheets and tide them through a slow first quarter in the new year.
Many will have to pull out all the stops to ensure they garner their share of the dollars. A promotional blitz may do the trick for some but it can be an expensive way to attract foot traffic and eyeballs, with the cost of advertising and marketing eating into the additional revenue and profit it generates.
Listing some or all of your range on an online marketplace or several can be a lower risk way to gain access to potential buyers who might not otherwise find their way to your store or site this Christmas.
In the past, the household name US sites – eBay, Amazon et al – had this segment of the ecommerce market largely to themselves. In 2022, that’s no longer the case. Local marketplace sites like Everyday Market from Woolworths and MyDeal have earned a name for themselves as one-stop shop equivalents to bricks and mortar department and variety stores. Meanwhile, specialist players, such as Barbeques Galore, Pet Stock and Everything Caravan and Camping, are killing it in their respective categories.
Executed smartly, an online marketplace can deliver substantial benefits for operator and sellers alike. The former is able to expand into new market segments and categories without having to make the significant capital investment in inventory that doing so would formerly have required. They’re also able to enjoy greater supply chain flexibility – a boon when stock shortages and shipping delays might otherwise see the business unable to deliver the goods.
Sellers, meanwhile, have the opportunity to position their wares in front of innumerable additional eyeballs, at a decidedly modest cost.
That’s always providing the operator in question runs their marketplace on a cloud based online marketplace platform like Marketplacer that can be integrated seamlessly with Shopify, BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud and other eCommerce solutions.
If you’re using one of these solutions to run your ecommerce operations, it’s possible to get up and running on a Marketplacer-powered marketplace in as little as a couple of days.
Think about where untapped markets for your offering may be found, identify a marketplace operator that plays in that space, agree on billing terms, link your online infrastructure to theirs and presto! Your business is ready to start selling and shipping to their customers, as well as your own.
Can this make a material difference to your sales? You better believe it! Participants in the Marketplacer Seller Program regularly tell us that becoming an online marketplace seller has helped them grow their turnover, in some cases by as much as 20 per cent within a year.
If boosting your sales during the silly season is a priority for your retail business, following their lead is likely to prove a seriously smart move.
Marketplacer’s Seller team is delighted to discuss any questions you may have about supercharging your sales by becoming an online marketplace seller.
