{"id":19207,"date":"2018-07-31T09:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shipstation.com\/?p=19207"},"modified":"2025-05-22T10:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T15:25:11","slug":"expert-third-party-marketplace-seller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shipstation.com\/blog\/expert-third-party-marketplace-seller\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Become an Expert Third-Party Marketplace Seller"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ecommerce has become inextricably intertwined with the idea of multichannel selling<\/a>. So it\u2019s reasonable for brands to assume it\u2019s a post-Internet approach to retail. The funny thing is that reaching consumers on multiple channels has actually been a selling strategy since the early 1900s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Story time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you know Sears started as an exclusively mail-order business? A ridiculously successful mail-order business at that. In 1895, the Sears, Roebuck and Co catalog<\/a> generated $750,000 in sales. Adjusting for inflation, that\u2019d be $21.3 million dollars today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But around the turn of the last century, Richard Warren Sears recognized brick-and-mortar locations were where the industry was headed. Thus, in 1925 he opened his first retail location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the important part of this whole history lesson. Even though his brick-and-mortar sales skyrocketed, Sears didn\u2019t abandon the catalog. And by 1931, the combined sales from the store and the catalog totaled $180 million \u2014 approximately $3 billion in 2018 dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sears had multiplied his revenue exponentially, just by selling on one additional channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multichannel Basics<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Admittedly, multichannel sales in 2018 are vastly different than they were in the \u201820s and \u201830s. But the moral is the same: retailers who don\u2019t engage in multichannel selling are leaving heaps of money on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The number of available selling channels varies based on which resource you consult. But overall, the five most popular are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Online stores<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Brick-and-mortar stores<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Mobile apps<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Social media<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Third-party marketplaces<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Depending on the size of your company, you can sell on any combination of these five. In this article, we\u2019ll focus specifically on adding a third-party marketplace to your sales channel mix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Ready to become the best third-party marketplace seller around ? Here are three things you need to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Optimize Your Picking Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \"Marketplace<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If your company only ships a couple orders a day, you may not give your picking strategy a second thought. Because when you break it down, it\u2019s really just grabbing merchandise from somewhere else in the building and bringing it back to the shipping area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But after you\u2019ve become a marketplace seller, the number of orders will start to increase. Now the picking process suddenly stops just being one employee\u2019s jaunt from point A to point B to snag a handful of products. And if your picking process can\u2019t scale as order volume grows, it can lead to shipping delays<\/a> and, in turn, unhappy customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Unless each item you sell is one-of-a-kind, you can assume multiple customers will be ordering the same SKUs. In fact, it\u2019s a good idea to consider the 80\/20 Rule when deciding your picking strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The 80\/20 Rule states that approximately 80% of your orders will be made up of 20% of your products. So it doesn\u2019t make much sense for pickers to make repeated trips to grab the same item(s) over and over for every individual order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Instead, employees should use a batch picking strategy. With batch picking (also known as multi-order picking), employees have a pick list with the total count for a SKU across all orders for a given period. Pickers can pull these popular items en masse, reducing the number of trips they have to make. As a result, you\u2019ll boost the efficiency of your entire pick-pack-ship workflow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    FACT:
    Almost half of all     online product searches<\/a> begin on third-party marketplaces.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    2. Invest in Inventory Management Software<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \"Marketplace<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Manually tracking inventory is playing with fire. There are just too many opportunities for errors. An employee may accidentally enter information incorrectly. Now you\u2019re at risk for selling merchandise you don\u2019t actually have. Or you could be listing popular products as out-of-stock when you\u2019ve actually got plenty more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Even if you\u2019re only selling on one channel, tracking inventory with a spreadsheet is still remarkably inefficient. First you have to log into that channel and download all of the order and inventory information. Then you have to update either a) several different spreadsheets, or) a single, increasingly monstrous spreadsheet. And when you become a third-party marketplace seller, the process takes even longer and is even more at risk of errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That is, of course, unless you invest in inventory management software<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Inventory management software helps you avoid all these headaches. An inventory management solution integrates with your selling channels as well as any other order management and fulfillment platforms you use. This means all of your systems are sharing the same information. Thus, not only are your inventory counts accurate, but your team also has more time to work on more important tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    FACT:
    Over 60% of consumers<\/a> say they feel comfortable buying from a company they\u2019ve never heard of on a third-party marketplace.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Bonus Tip!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Even though they\u2019re the largest, Amazon and eBay aren\u2019t the be-all, end-all of third-party marketplaces. Consider selling on one of these other channels:<\/p>\n\n\n\n