This move by Ultra Commerce follows on the heels of an acquisition completed in mid-2023 of Pru Cart group, a North American based eCommerce platform (Pinnacle Cart), and Digital Marketing services business. These transactions are part of Ultra Commerce’s strategy of building a market leading portfolio of eCommerce software solutions, focused on the high growth B2B eCommerce market segment, helping to empower customers to grow through digital channels.

Ultra Commerce is helping empower businesses to fast-track their digital transformation with a sharp focus on addressing the complex eCommerce requirements that B2B businesses have, including handling complex product catalogs, diverse order fulfillment and inventory management, along with innovative eCommerce business models like marketplaces.

Commenting on the acquisition, CEO of Ultra Commerce, Matthew Hyland, stated, “B2B eCommerce today is a rapidly evolving and high growth market with business needs becoming more complex, and new business models being created to capture revenue opportunities. Our clients are looking for comprehensive solutions that not only meet their immediate requirements, but also that can provide a roadmap for new growth channels. Marketplaces and multi-vendor commerce offers organisations new revenue and growth channels through a myriad of implementation strategies – and Omnyfy, with its breadth of clients across different industries is a proven technology that enables marketplace commerce and drives this growth.“

The B2B eCommerce segment is undergoing a remarkable surge, while simultaneously, there is a notable upswing in multi-vendor marketplace commerce and drop shipping, with Gartner predicting that over 75% of B2B procurement spending will occur through online marketplaces by 2023 and by 2026, 80% of B2B sales interactions between buyer and seller will occur in digital channels, an increase from 30% today. These compelling market trends underscored the strategic move by Ultra Commerce to acquire Omnyfy, as organizations increasingly invest in both B2B commerce transformation and marketplace enablement.

Established in 2017, Omnyfy has grown to become one of the leading marketplace software providers globally and is recognised by Gartner as a representative vendor of multi-vendor commerce solutions for enterprise clients. Omnyfy provides organisations with a scalable marketplace platform solution that enables them to create multi-vendor commerce solutions that extend their existing business models or launch green-field projects to capitalise on previously untapped revenue channels. This ability, to drive multi-vendor commerce, is a key growth factor in eCommerce today. Analyst firms including Gartner and Forrester concur that B2C, B2B and B2B2X marketplaces are a key driver of commerce growth and over a third of high GMV businesses will be adopting some form of multi-vendor commerce to drive sales, boost loyalty, extend range and capture increasing share of their client wallet.

Omnyfy’s marketplace technology is used by organisations ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. The company’s technology is used by clients globally in industry verticals ranging from Retail, to Healthcare, Wholesale B2B, Services, Software, Fashion, Homewares, Heavy Industries and Shopping Centres. Omnyfy is one of the only marketplace technologies globally to offer built in support for complex B2B commerce such as Project Quotation, Milestone based billing, Integrated invoicing management, Approvals workflows and more, delivering a feature-packed offering for organisations looking to implement complex B2B, B2B2X, Consumer or Service marketplaces.

The synergies created by the two organisations are significant.

Synergy of Expertise: Ultra Commerce brings extensive experience as a global enterprise B2B Software platform. By integrating Omnyfy’s cutting-edge multi-vendor marketplace capabilities, Ultra Commerce is poised to redefine the standards of B2B digital transformation.

Market Demand: With the B2B commerce landscape evolving rapidly, there is an increasing demand for solutions that go beyond conventional eCommerce. The acquisition positions Ultra Commerce as a strategic partner for businesses looking to not only adapt but thrive in the digital marketplace.

Vision for the Future: Ultra Commerce’s forward-looking approach recognizes the transformative potential of B2B commerce and the growth drivers that multi-vendor commerce offers. The acquisition of Omnyfy reinforces this commitment, reflecting the company’s dedication to providing innovative solutions that anticipate market expectations.

“We are excited about the possibilities that this collaboration brings, as we continue to empower businesses with the tools they need to thrive in the dynamic world of eCommerce.”, said Mr. Hyland.

Fabian Rebeiro, CEO of Omnyfy joins Ultra Commerce as Chief Commercial Officer, looking after the organisation’s product suite and driving commercial activities. “Enterprise Marketplaces are one of the fastest growing digital commerce trends globally, for high GMV organisations and Omnyfy’s marketplace product offers one of the most feature-rich marketplace enablement solutions on the market today – especially for B2B marketplace enablement. This acquisition of Omnyfy demonstrates the market opportunity that multi-vendor commerce brings to B2B transformation projects, and we’re very excited to join a forward-looking technology company like Ultra Commerce, to turbo charge the development of Omnyfy and our new product lines which will truly change how companies approach marketplace technology and how it’s leveraged as a fully integrated part of a commerce stack“, stated Mr. Rebeiro.

About Ultra Commerce

Ultra Commerce is a fully integrated Headless eCommerce platform business focused on enterprise B2B commerce enablement. HQ in Sydney Australia with operations in 5 countries, and a customer base of over 350 organisations.

About Omnyfy

Omnyfy is a PaaS, multi-vendor marketplace platform for B2C, B2B, Service and Procurement marketplaces. Based in Australia, Omnyfy empowers marketplace platforms globally across 13 countries and 15 industry verticals.

Marketplaces are platforms with large volumes of transactions between buyers and sellers for goods and services. It is critical that the financial component of these transactions is effectively managed and allows customers to scale quickly. Millions of companies—from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. With Stripe Connect, Omnyfy offers businesses a holistic solution for running and operating a multi-vendor marketplace.

Customers will benefit from the robust and scalable global solutions that Omnyfy and Stripe offer to grow exponentially. We will constantly innovate and work with global partners like Stripe to provide the new commerce with next generation solutions.

Frictionless commerce

In a world where B2C and B2B commerce and multi-vendor marketplaces are quickly expanding, businesses are beginning to look outside of the traditional lines of operation in a fight to defend their market position. This growth, and the willingness to venture into commerce and multi-vendor marketplaces, is largely attributed to the frictionless experience of Stripe solutions.

We have all experienced the frustrations when attempting to complete a purchase, consequently resulting in abandoned carts. Stripe puts the user at the forefront of the technology and paths a way to purchase. Users are presented with an uncomplicated, intuitive, and concise checkout page featuring Stripe’s payment integration. By utilising Stripe’s frictionless payment experience, customers’ security fears are alleviated, the checkout process is expedited on site, and the stress and extra steps at payment are relieved.

Customers are constantly expecting a fully frictionless payment experience, and to remain competitive, business owners must meet these demands. Stripe’s frictionless payment experience is provided entirely out-of-the-box, meeting the needs of businesses. In the interest of business owners, they see a reduction in cart abandonment rates, an increase in payment efficiency, and an overall increase in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

It is easy to see why Omnyfy has positioned Stripe as the leading payment integrations on our clients’ marketplaces, and we are extremely proud to be identified as one of Stripe’s launch partners for the partner ecosystem program.

How Stripe helps to accelerate launching a marketplace

Omnyfy has seamlessly integrated a range of Stripe products that fast track the development of a marketplace. We have made the pay in and pay out process a breeze with the help of Stripe Connect which allowed us to build an advanced commercial management tool for the marketplace administrators. The fully automated solution provides accurate accounting and visibility of their earnings for the marketplace owner and vendors. The release of funds from the marketplace to the vendors is as easy as a single click.

Onboarding new vendors is critical for the life of a marketplace and mainly in its infancy. The integrated KYC (Know Your Customer) process included with Stripe Connect is accelerating this onboarding but also removing the hurdle for marketplaces to go through an extensive process. They can then focus on other tasks while all vendors that register, and are approved, to participate on the marketplace can complete the KYC process in a few simple steps directly from the marketplace backend.

Start local, go global

Stripe supports Omnyfy’s customers in many ways and this is proven by the range of payment options available at checkout. Businesses can reach more customers worldwide with a unified, global platform and support for over 135 currencies and local payment methods through a single integration. From traditional payments methods to Buy Now Pay Later and popular digital wallets, the range of options is constantly evolving. The integration of Stripe within our marketplace platform is not only enabling our customers to get access to future technology but also to target new markets to expand beyond their borders and access the world.

Powering B2B Commerce

As part of the Advanced B2B Features Suite released with the new Omnyfy V4 platform, we have introduced a new capability to manage payment terms and credit limits on the marketplace designed for Business to Business transactions. Leveraging Stripe technology, we have powered this new feature with Stripe Direct Debit to allow payment terms. The terms are defined on a one-to-one relationship between buyers and vendors. The organisational structure enables you to have different payment terms for different departments. The marketplace platform will manage seamlessly all payments to occur through the different terms that are setup. This is an extremely powerful feature for all B2B and procurement marketplaces.

Omnyfy is making a global push after successfully closing a Series A round of funding. Having a strong market position in Australia, the company is aiming to focus on building its presence in the US, South-East Asia and Europe.

Omnyfy’s technology allows businesses and enterprises to create a multi-vendor e-commerce marketplace, similar to Ebay, Amazon or Etsy. For shopping centres and retail precincts this means they can now create an identical digital twin of their shopping mall, where all products and services in physical stores are available for purchase online through the marketplace. Retailers and startups, on the other hand, can use the technology to launch a multi-vendor e-commerce marketplace and leverage a drop-shipping model to rapidly scale their businesses.

“Marketplaces continue to be one of the fastest growing sectors of e-commerce – online retailers have realised how profitable this model is. The physical retail, on the contrary, hasn’t yet grabbed on to the opportunity presented by multi-vendor commerce”, said Fabian Rebeiro, CEO of Omnyfy.  

Established in 2017, Omnyfy has seen rapid growth and now boasts clients in 10 countries and a global partner network in 16 countries. Its client base includes major Australian businesses like Australia Post, Melbourne Airport, South Melbourne Markets, Mirvac; global organisations such as Changi Airport, Danaher Group and a large and expanding mix of marketplace upstarts. 

With a wide range of applications for its marketplace technology, Omnyfy is seeking to capitalise on the opportunities within the retail sector as the industry seeks to re-open and find new ways to address dropping sales, visitor numbers due to COVID restrictions and the convenience of online shopping. “For two decades now, shopping centres have been under significant pressure from increasing levels of online commerce – we provide retail asset owners a way to recapture these lost consumers and, at the same time, participate in the value that marketplaces create from data and analytics through to significant retail sales”, said Mr. Rebeiro. 

Omnyfy’s Series A round of $3.3m included investments from long-term backers Sturt Capital Partners, Taronga Ventures and private investors.  

Taronga Venture’s RealTech Ventures Fund, is an institutional venture fund investing into globally scalable entities that will enhance or challenge the way real estate is designed, procured, financed, developed and managed across all sectors. 

Mr. Jonathan Hamman – “We identified Omnyfy as a business with the right mix of technology, experience and capabilities to deliver a truly innovative solution to retail precincts that desperately need a technology to help them innovate.” 

Mr. Rebeiro added, “Having Taronga Ventures back Omnyfy, and being part of the RealTechX program has definitely been a boost for Omnyfy, and a confirmation of our vision, and has put us in front of some of the world’s largest asset owners, giving us the opportunity to grow the business globally.” 

With over 50 clients using the platform today, 35% of which are international, Omnyfy has established itself as a serious player in the e-commerce marketplace platform globally, being featured by Gartner in multiple marketplace technology provider reports. Mr. Rebeiro added, “I’m proud of what we’ve achieved in just a few years, to not only have our technology being used by major organisations in Australia and globally, but also to be consistently competing with companies far bigger than us in marketplace deals”. 

About Omnyfy

Omnyfy is a PaaS Multi-Vendor Marketplace Platform that enables marketplace owners and operators to rapidly create, launch and manage large scale, global marketplaces. Established in Australia in 2017, Omnyfy has quickly grown to be a reputable brand name globally, for multi-vendor marketplace platforms, with solid technology review ratings and recognition from Gartner as a key provider of turnkey and headless marketplace platform solutions. The platform is trusted by global businesses, including successful startups and large enterprises.

About Taronga Ventures, the RealTech Ventures Fund and RealTechX

Taronga Ventures, through its RealTech Ventures Fund, is a technology and innovation investor focused on innovation for the built environment. The Fund is an institutional venture fund that invests in globally scalable entities that will enhance or challenge the way real estate is designed, procured, financed, developed and managed across all sectors. The Fund is focused on developing a diverse portfolio covering sustainability, design, materials and software and provides capital, mentorship and global networks for those companies in which it invests, as well as first mover advantage for the leading global real estate institutions that are the investors in the Fund. Taronga Ventures has extensive experience across global markets and asset classes and is supported by strategic and institutional partners across Asia, the Middle East and Europe. RealTechX is Asia’s first government supported, industry-focused independent scale-up program for companies impacting real estate and the wider built world.

About Sturt Capital 

Sturt Capital Partners is a privately-held advisory, asset finance and investment business. It specialises in providing quality outcomes for its clients, across a range of disciplines including – asset finance, advisory and investment: sourcing, arranging and management of niche investment products for private and small institutional investors. Sturt Capital and its partners will generally co-invest in such opportunities, alongside its clients.

One of the instant benefits for the consumers is that Online Shopping Centre Marketplace provides an opportunity to get their usual shopping done online, under one umbrella bringing more convenience and optimising delivery time and costs.

“The success of a marketplace comes from the ability of the marketplace to offer buyers and sellers something unique, a new way of exploring, engaging and transacting, that improves the experience for everyone. Omnyfy offers a turn-key marketplace platform with extensive customisation capability and flexibility to create any marketplace you want “, said Alexis Susser, GM Sales and Marketing at Omnyfy.

Learn how Omnyfy helps retailers, shopping centres, airports to build an online distribution channel by creating a multi-vendor digital marketplace.

The Project Bidding Module with milestones payments functionality is a vital addition to any professional services or procurement marketplace. This powerful add-on module allows marketplace customers to post a project and connect with multiple vendors and specialty contractors that meet their requirements.

The Project Bidding Module is perfect to accommodate any tender process. The module allows customers to post a detailed project brief, find and invite suitable vendors to participate in the bidding. Vendors, on the other side, are able to accept the project and send their proposal, with the scope divided into milestones if necessary. Once both sides get involved in the negotiation process, the module is able to maintain the communication and support all future transactions between the parties.

Such functionality is a must-have module for almost any professional services marketplace. It ensures a great customer experience and enhances the transparency of all communications and transactions. This helps marketplace owner to establish their reputation and build trust within their industry.

The module was first launched with Poligage – a professional services marketplace that helps businesses find and engage with government and commercial policy advisors.

Project Bidding Module Benefits

• Connects project owners with vendors and service providers in the clear and transparent manner
• Allows to manage different parts of the project, involving multiple vendors
• Allows project owner to choose, compare and negotiate with multiple providers at the same time
• Enables millstone-based scope management and payments

Professional services marketplaces are one of the fastest growing and most lucrative types of multi-vendor marketplace business models. Research from 2017 indicate that the market was slated to grow by 5.4% YoY, reaching almost $5 trillion globally, by 2020. This rise can be attributed to several key factors including:

1. Increased trust and quality of providers on professional service marketplaces
2. An open and transparent review and recognition mechanism that rewards performance and highlights poor quality work, enabling the cream to rise to the top
3. Increase in professionals working remotely.
4. Finding the best person at the best rate rather than having to rely on someone locally, especially for highly specialised workloads including development, design, content production, research services, tax services, accounting etc.

For anyone looking to either offer or obtain specialized services, marketplaces provide a great opportunity to find the best person for the job, at a price point that the customer can afford. In addition to connecting professionals and businesses, these platforms also allow for secure payment transactions, where funds are held in an escrow facility and only released when the service is delivered or the work has been completed to a satisfactory level of quality.

This way, service providers have peace of mind knowing they’ll receive payment for the work they’ve done. From the buyer’s perspective, marketplaces allow businesses to reduce risks of online scams, especially after receiving a subpar service.

According to Forbes, the value of the B2B marketplace commerce in the U.S. alone will be worth of $1.2Tn. With that in mind, demand for having a specialized marketplace is higher than ever. This provides a great opportunity for anyone who plans to launch such a platform.

Types of professional services marketplaces

Services Marketplaces include a range of sectors and levels of jobs, from trades jobs such as finding electricians and plumbers or locksmiths through to high-end professional services such as developers, accountants, legal practitioners or conveyancers.

There’s generally two paths that can be take by professional services marketplaces, depending on how sophisticated or accessible the supply side (online sellers) can be:

Generic professional service marketplaces land up becoming listing sites or directories. Apart from providing the contact details of the provider and behaving as a low-quality lead generation mechanism, these marketplaces do not usually offer any additional value. Directories such as Yellow Pages, fall into this category. View this video to see how marketplaces have evolved, especially with professional service marketplaces.

Generally speaking there are two three types of functional marketplaces that you can create when considering a professional service marketplace.

1. One way is to allow professionals to create their own profile and state what kind of services they’re able to offer. Businesses can then search your marketplace and look for people who are able to provide the exact service they need.
2. The other solution is to build a platform that goes allows businesses to request services they need. By looking at the job description, professionals can see what kind of work the business requires and in what time frame. If they think they’re able to fulfill such a request, a professional can then submit their proposal and wait for the feedback.
3. Of course, there’s a third option to consider as well, which combines both of these models. Although this can make your marketplace pretty versatile, it can also increase its complexity. Naturally, you can solve this by optimizing the user experience for your marketplace, making it a breeze to work with.

The 5 Most Important Features Your Marketplace Should Have

1) Advanced Search Options

The ability to quickly and easily find a service provider online is key to developing a winning professional services marketplace. When looking for a specific service for your business needs, it would be quite inconvenient to have to scroll through all the service listings.

To provide a good user experience, having a powerful search engine is a must. Besides that, it also needs to have various filters which can include service categories, subcategories, and specializations, for example. It’s also important to be able to search listings by other criteria, such as charge per hour, availability, location, language, etc.

Wizard type searches such as those used on Serviceseeking.com.au are a great way to guide your users in making selections, leading them to a search outcome.

2) Payment Processing

Once you enable professionals and businesses to connect with each other, the next step is to provide secure payment processing. By allowing your users to charge and pay for the services directly through your marketplace, you eliminate any additional work they’d have otherwise. This creates a stress-free environment, both for those paying for services and those that charge for providing them. Of course, this directly feeds to your business case as well, since you’ll collect a marketplace fee from these transactions.

Service marketplace billing is the next most important feature to look for. Billing for service marketplace must a range of billing options including fixed price billing, hourly based billing and billing on quote.

Payment processing on a marketplace involves holding the funds in escrow until the service is delivered. This offers confidence to both seller and buyer, that their funds are being held and will be released once both parties are satisfied with the service delivery.

3) Service and product listing

The Service or Product listing page is the page that customers use to make their decision on whether or not to engage with the provider..

Service listing should be a top consideration and must allow service providers to clearly showcase their offering. The page should include a detailed description of the service, examples of previous work, display of past reviews and tagging with a range of attributes that are used by customers when conducting searches.

4) Notifications and Messaging

Performing highly-skilled tasks requires seamless communication between two parties. That is why your marketplace must include an internal messaging system to keep all the communication on your platform. This will allow for proper business communication between users, eliminating the need to use e-mail or any other form of communication.

Besides being able to chat between each other, your users also need to exchange documents and files. Another feature worth pointing out is the chat history, which serves as proof of any previous conversations.

5) User Profiles

Along with job postings or service offers, each user in your marketplace needs their own profile page. For professionals, this will allow them to provide information about the services they offer. This is also the place where they can show their previous experience, special skills, and how much they charge per hour. For businesses, a profile page can allow professionals to understand what their company works on, what kind of services they require, and how often they hire professionals.

6) Scoring System

Reviews and ratings are an important part of any marketplace. This allows the users to provide relevant feedback about their partners, as well as choose a professional or company that’s in good standing. Although you can rely solely on the feedback and comments, it’s best to introduce some kind of a scoring system as well. One of the most common examples is star rating, which goes from one to five stars, with the latter being the highest mark.

Learn from the Existing Examples

With so many online marketplaces already in place, it’s essential to use this opportunity and learn from the best. Two of the most popular platforms that provide all kinds of services are Upwork and Freelancer.

Both cover a wide range of professions and mostly focus on businesses posting job offers. This allows service providers to pick and choose jobs they’d like to work on. Of course, once they submit their proposals, it’s on the business owner to decide who they’ll hire.

If you’re planning to create a specialized marketplace for high-end services, you can check out some of the top online marketplaces for professional services below.

To get a better insight into how this works for particular professions, the list below features examples for Legal, Accounting, and Web Development services.

Legal Services

• UpCounsel

UpCounsel enables entrepreneurs and businesses to locate and hire attorneys. Depending on the business’ requirements and their budget, the platform will provide three to four attorneys that look like the best fit.

After attorneys send their proposals, the business owner can select one to work with. The main benefit of this system is that businesses don’t have to sign expensive contracts with law firms. Instead, they can choose an attorney for a single task if they want, without wasting time on complex paperwork, meetings, and negotiations.

• Avvo

With Avvo, things work a little differently. First of all, the main component of their marketplace model is scraping the internet to find licensed attorneys and include them in their listings. Creating a huge number of lawyer profiles this way, they can easily service any kind of legal need for businesses. Avvo boasts that their marketplace includes over 97% of all licensed attorneys in the U.S.

Accounting Services

• InHomeAccountants

Providing on-demand services in the accounting profession, this platform connects independent accountants with businesses that require such services. The process is quite simple.

First, an accountant creates a profile and enters their accounting and software skills, as well as the licenses they have. Next, a company defines their project by entering its scope, deliverables, and deadline.

They may also require a specific skill set or a license. Finally, the platform matches accountants with the existing projects, allowing everyone an equal chance to bid for the job.

• Shngli

Being another accounting marketplace, Shngli approaches the game differently to others. In order to provide the best accounting services on their platform, they go the extra mile in their process. Focusing only on southern Florida for now, Shngli interviews and validates each accountant they bring to their platform. Although not a world-wide marketplace at the moment, this is a great example of how to think out of the box and approach your niche directly with an added value.

Web Development

• Toptal

Working in one of the most sought-after professions at the moment, web developers can use Toptal to easily connect with businesses. Thanks to the online tests, Toptal is able to initially screen developers that come to their platform. Using skill, personality, and language testing, businesses can be sure they’re looking at the prime selection of online talent. Especially since Toptal chooses only around 3% of the several thousand applications they receive each month.

• Expert360

Based in Australia, this global marketplace provides an opportunity for a large number of highly-skilled developers to find remote work. Just like Toptal, Expert360 has a rigorous screening process, making sure their talent pool is at the highest level. This goes as far as organizing interviews with their applicants.

The best marketplace platform for launching a professional services marketplace

Omnyfy provides a comprehensive marketplace platform on which to build and launch your professional services marketplace vision.

With a comprehensive suite of functionality our PaaS Marketplace Platform delivers everything you need and is backed by our amazing customer service.

If you choose the Omnyfy platform, you’ll receive a host of specialized features that cater to the requirements of a professional services marketplace. It provides a flexible payment system which covers all types of payments, be it fixed, milestone based, or anything in between. To allow your users to properly plan their work time, Omnyfy provides the booking and appointments feature as well.

Besides these options, Omnyfy marketplaces include many others, all essential for the success of your endeavour. You can check out the full list of features specifically for professional services marketplace here.

Relating to your target audience is a relatively wide statement and can range from the type of Fashion you’re selling to the values that your marketplace ensconces. Marketplaces can stand out by focusing on specific segments such as specifically street wear, high-fashion, party fashion or just jeans, or for specific values such as independent brands, co-ops, second hand clothing or sustainable manufacturing. The more precise you are with your positioning and target “tribe”, the more successful you’ll be in acquiring and growing a customer base.

And this is a great time to start. In a recent Round Table interview with McKinsey, Boris Ewenstein of Zalando stated, in response to the boom in online sales driven by the Covid19 lockdown, “But after March 30, the landscape changed again. People who would have bought offline before are now moving into online. Of our 32 million active customers as of March 31, 17 percent are new (year over year). We sold one million items just over Easter via our direct-to-consumer partner program, which is up more than 100 percent from last year. Similarly, new sign-ups to the Partner Program were up 150 percent from February to March.”

This week, in our ongoing Spotlight Series of articles where we focus on specific industry niches and provide advise to new startup entrepreneurs or existing businesses in the sector who want to launch and online marketplace, we are taking a look at the specific challenges of creating a Fashion marketplace. You will learn what customer needs you should really focus on and how a to accelerate your go to market with a PaaS Marketplace Platform. Plus, you’ll see what the best in the business is doing, and why it works.

The Types of Online Fashion Websites

When looking to launch an online marketplace, where the need to create the network effects are critical to success, first identify precisely what your positioning will be and evaluate if there is a sufficiently large Total Addressable Market in your segment, for your marketplace to be successful. Remember the closer the shared interest between your vendors (sellers) and buyers, the more network effects it generates – i.e. more sellers attract more buyers and vice versa, which will ensure organic growth of your marketplace.

Broadly speaking, fashion vendors can be broken down into anywhere from five to ten segments.

The value market is the lowest on the ladder. Essentially, brands in the value market focus on volume sales. Their products do not need to meet high-quality standards, but consumers expect to get something affordable. Fast-Fashion falls in this segment and there is a large and growing collection of marketplaces and brands that meet the needs of this sector.

Fast Fashion is however seeing push back in countries where customers are recognising the impact that cheap fashion is having on the environment as well as the terrible conditions in which producers of Fast Fashion clothing operate – especially in countries such as Bangladesh and Sri-Lanka where a large volume of these clothing are produced.

High street brands: mass market, mid-level, and high-end. Without delving deeply into each, high street brands are those that have a specific aesthetic and cater to a defined group of consumers. These brands can span the gamut of price and value, but the defining characteristic is their core customer profile, which reflect interest in the latest fashion trends and an age range that skews towards teenagers through to early-stage professionals.

The number of brands in this category are in the thousands and include both owned brand department stores like H&M, Uniqlo and M&S through to designer labels such as Chloé, Furla, Max Mara etc. We’re simply not doing this category justice in naming brands, as this is widely considered the largest sector of the fashion market.

Luxury fashion and the haute couture segment follow high-end mass market brands, with a focus on designer labels, premium production and exclusive distribution, usually through top fashion retailers or direct to consumer channels.

In many cases brands in this category do not showcase their pricing online in the retail channel, but are regularly featured in the second-hand resale fashion marketplaces, where top brands such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Prada and the like are regularly sold. Marketplace such as Vestiaire Collective (https://www.vestiairecollective.com/), Cocoon Club (https://www.cocoon.club/) and Edit Second Hand (https://editsecondhand.com/) are examples of marketplaces that provide a secondary market for people to sell prized high-end luxury fashion and accessories.

The handmade market segment is one of the most popular on some online marketplaces, such as Etsy. Prices can vary widely among handmade vendors and the quality of products depends on the source.

Lastly, the bespoke fashion segment is one of the fastest growing in the online fashion marketplace scene. Although the term bespoke typically indicates high-end products, there are many vendors who specialise in affordable bespoke clothing. Examples of bespoke brands or made-to-measure fashion include Indochino (https://www.indochino.com/) and Sumussura (https://www.sumissura.com/)

Picking a Marketplace Platform Solution to Meet Your Customers’ Needs

Now that we’ve looked at the different types of segments in Fashion, primarily based on Fashion type, rather than the aforementioned “Values” proposition, and you’ve identified the specific segment of customer based that is large enough to sustain the marketplace, let’s look at what you need to create a winning one.

We will be following a structure in all our Showcase articles when discussing functional requirements of a marketplace for a specific sector:

1)     The Hygiene Factors – these are the requirements that you simply cannot live without and should not compromise on. In most cases these functional capabilities of your marketplace will also align with general best-practices when developing a high-performance, UX optimised website.

2)     The Winning Factors – These functionalities will differentiate you from the pack and is where your selected platform on which you choose to build your marketplace must support customisation and extension

3)     The Cream on the Cake – This is where your innovation comes in – based on your experience in the sector, working with vendors in the industry or simply a functionality that will draw a large number of users, both vendor side or buyer side, to your platform.

The Hygiene factors

Here are some of the basic Hygiene Factors that fashion consumers want from an online marketplace:

For buyers

• Simple product listing and navigation.
• Faceted search – the ability to search everything and have filters that are relevant to the category that they are viewed
• Fast search with instant lookup – remember, customers all approach search differently, some prefer to browse hundreds of category pages searching for what they want, while others want to get straight to the product or brand they are looking for
• Category pages with the ability to add category descriptions, critical for SEO
• Human readable URL’s – a URL structure that uses the category names and hierarchy to display the categories so that it can be crawled better by search engines
• Beautiful, informative and usable product pages. If there are unique aspects of the products on your marketplace, consider using iconography to highlight which products deliver on these specifications. This could include Organic, Cruelty Free, Co-Op produced, Supports fight against modern slavery etc. Do not forget that your customers will want to quickly get to products that match their values and buying requirements, so make it easy for them
• Reviews and ratings that are immediately visible to customers
• The ability to easily configure their intended purchase with size, colours etc with an accompanying size chart for every product to minimise the chance of customers buying the wrong size and having to return the product
• The ability for customers to immediately see who is selling the product
• Beautiful seller pages that showcase the seller’s differentiating factors as well as their products on one page

• A fully integrated online payment solution with the ability to use multiple payment methods including local payment methods around the world.

For Sellers

• A streamlined onboarding process for your vendors, to allow them to onboard, get verified and start selling easily
• Social media integration for sharing
• Quick and easy product listing for approved sellers.
•  Effective messaging channels between buyers and sellers.
• A friction-free order system and comprehensive analytics.
•  Responsive online shopping – without a mobile-friendly marketplace, you will have a serious uphill battle reaching fashion vendors.
• Reliable uptime – missing out on sales during an important product drop because a site is down can mean crippling losses for a vendor in the fashion space.
• Perhaps most importantly: the ability to turn traffic into revenue

Top 5 Key Features That a Marketplace in Online Fashion Needs to Have to Win

Surprisingly, many online fashion marketplace websites fail to identify crucial elements of success in the industry. And it stems from a failure to marry some traditional concepts of fashion with their counterparts in the multi-vendor eCommerce store space.

Here are five features you cannot do without if you want to succeed:

1. Extremely high degree of customisation. More so than in other industries, merchants in fashion need to constantly update their product offering and marketing approach. And it is worth considering the scaling issue from the start. Note however, that the more complex you make your personalisation for your buyers, the more effort is required from your sellers to create configurable or customisable products on your marketplace. It is better to support this than not – and you need to ensure that you provide sufficient help guides to your sellers to guide them on how to setup highly customisable product listings.

2. Accessible product catalogue. In the world of fashion, product catalogues change by the hour in some cases. Merchants will want the freedom to modify their product offering easily. Consider integrations with the retailer’s own stores – ensure that your marketplace platform can support API integrations with top eCommerce platforms to allow your vendors to integrate and sell their entire catalogue on your marketplace.

3. Analytics from day one – Integration with Analytics Platforms such as Google Analytics with the ability to also track with GTM for advanced analytics. GTM and advanced eCommerce Analytics from Google in crucial to provide step-by-step conversion tracking for your marketplace. Ensure that these are configured from day one, so you do not miss tracking data that tells you how your marketplace is performing.

4. Integrated shipping and logistics: One of the biggest elements of marketplaces that we see missed when determining the features and functionality is integrated shipping. In many cases your marketplace vendors will have their own carriers, however, to provide vendors a complete solution, providing integrated carriers is critical. This allows Vendors to onboard more easily and utilise either the marketplace owner’s shipping solution or sign up for their own and use the marketplace to perform all their shipping for marketplace orders. For integrated vendors, the orders will be passed back to their eCommerce store, from which they can fulfil using their existing 3PL or freight providers.

5.  A platform that supports customisation and extensions – Fashion marketplaces, if not customised to meet the needs of the specific segment that it is targeting, will inevitably become just another site on the internet from where you can purchase products. Software-as-a-service marketplace platforms are simply not sufficient for long-term, scalable marketplace growth.

Keeping in mind that according to Forbes, Amazon accounts for over 80% of all sales in the U.S. that leaves an already minor share of the fashion pie within which thousands of online retailers and brands compete.

To stand out and be different your marketplace must have a secret sauce. Here are examples:

• Allowing your customers to showcase their fashion ideas or create Look Books (like Fashmates – https://www.fashmates.com/)
• Integrate with Instagram to show off their new fashion
• Target unique selling methods such as flash-sales
• Provide buying opportunities from unique sellers or provide integrations with a whole host of other platforms

the ability to customise and extend the marketplace platform is crucial and should be a key determining factor when selecting which platform you want to build your marketplace solution.

Best Online Fashion Marketplace Examples and What They are Doing Right

The best marketplaces in the fashion industry have a few things in common. They are crystal clear about who their target audience is, and what those customers need to be successful. Here is a list of some of the top performers in the industry.

1. Zalando

One of the biggest online retailers in Germany, Zalando accounts for around 1.6% of the fashion spend of the entire European Union. Although their partner marketplace is only a small part (10%) of their business, it is a small slice of a €6.6 billion ($10.8 billion) pie. Seeing the opportunity in the marketplace, Zalando aims to grow its partner revenue by 40%.

2. Farfetch

A prime destination for vendors who specialise in luxury brands. Over 3,000 merchants use Farfetch to sell their products and it has just about every type of fashion product imaginable. The business model for Farfetch was ambitious from the start, aiming to provide a platform for all luxury fashion brands across the world. Its success speaks for itself and it offers more features than most competitors.

3. ASOS Marketplace

A global leader in the B2C multi-vendor marketplace sector, ASOS focuses on peerless customer experience as a differentiating factor. The platform insists on free delivery and returns and risk-free checkout options. And its efforts have certainly paid off since it fields almost 100 million visits a month. Originally founded in London in the year 2000, the British fashion retailer now ships to every country in the world in addition to marketplace sales.

4. Myntra

Myntra is a retailer from India that focuses on lifestyle and fashion that ended up expanding into a partner-based marketplace. With a strong focus on merchant satisfaction, Myntra invests in a painless onboarding process and many other vendor amenities to attract customers. It has peaked at over 40 million visits per month.

5. StockX

StockX is one of the most successful fashion marketplaces for high-end sneakers. Still relatively young, the sneaker resale website was founded in 2015 but it is already valued at over a billion dollars. A large part of its success was identifying pain points for both the average marketplace vendor and buyer. One of the main sources of consternation among sneaker shoppers is the shoes’ authenticity. So, the company guarantees every shoe to be authentic with a solid refund policy.

6. Nineteenth Amendment

Although they do not boast the kind of numbers some global competitors do, Nineteenth Amendment carved out a space in a clever way. It allows shoppers to purchase items from independent designers at a pre-purchase price. Then, designers manufacture them on-demand with the help of manufacturing partners across the United States.

7. Lyst

A thoroughly global brand, Lyst focuses on attracting as many vendors as possible and providing a massive catalogue of items. From their apps to their merchant onboarding, everything is designed to make the selling process frictionless. They represent over 2,000 merchants and carry over five million products all told.

8. Amazon

Despite its success, Amazon is a good example of how a marketplace can get away with bad practices if it is great at generating revenue. Amazon’s product management is atrocious, Amazon competes with their own merchants on the marketplace, and the onboard is minimal. Yet, millions of merchants choose it to place their products because it reliably creates revenue streams for them.

Are you looking to start up and create a fashion marketplace?

Picking the marketplace software platform that is right for you, is about matching your requirements to the capabilities of the solution and the ability to support your long term growth plans.

Omnyfy’s Multi-Vendor PaaS Marketplace Platform is the ideal solution on which to build and launch your marketplace. We have developed Omnyfy to tick all the boxes required to start and launch a winning fashion marketplace. Check out our features and modules and case studies on fashion and retail marketplaces below, and if you are ready to proceed, book a meeting with us for a free initial consultation.

Check out our Marketplace features here and explore how Omnyfy can help create a customized marketplace solution for your fashion marketplace idea.

View the full Webinar Recording

Here’s an overview of the Webinar.

While lockdown restrictions have started to be lifted across Asia Pacific, retail stores and shopping centers are still facing low footfall. The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally transformed the way consumers shop and their expectations of retailers–physical outlets will remain important, but now need to play a different role in the purchase journey. It’s imperative that retailers adapt to the “new normal” by offering compelling omnichannel experiences for their shoppers.

Join experts from Omnyfy, Stripe, and MONI, to discover how you can capture new online sales and stay ahead of the curve by launching your own multi-vendor marketplace in less than 4 weeks.

This webinar is ideal for retail-focused business leaders and IT professionals (e.g. at shopping centers, convenience stores, chain stores, department stores, manufacturers, etc.) who need a feature-rich and easy-to-implement online marketplace solution.

Timothy Weale

National Manager, Retail Solutions

Mirvac

Jon Stona

Head of APAC Marketing

Stripe

David Francois

Managing Director

Moni Media

Fabian Rebeiro

Founder & CEO

Omnyfy

The webinar will cover:

• Major changes in Asia-Pacific shopping behaviours post-pandemic
• Benefits and challenges involved in managing online marketplaces
• How to launch a powerful online marketplace in under 4 weeks
• Omni-channel best practices
• Government funding programs in Hong Kong and Singapore