How to Build a Successful Online Fashion and Apparel Marketplace

Fashion never goes out of fashion! Don’t you believe in this too? Well, I do.

The global fashion industry is rising and experiencing explosive growth especially after the digital revolution. The industry is actively adopting innovative technologies and making its mark in all the major countries across the world.

According to the Fashion eCommerce Report by Statista, the market is expected to grow at 12.2% per year and reach a total market size of US$991.64 Billion by the end of 2024. 

That’s Whooping! I guess it’s best if you start an online fashion marketplace in 2020 itself. Let’s go further and understand how exactly an online fashion marketplace works and what would be the best way to start a fashion and apparel eCommerce store.

Business Model For The Online Fashion Marketplace

There is not much difference between the business model of any other eCommerce marketplace and online fashion marketplace. Here I am listing a few points for explaining how the marketplace works:

• The buyer signs up on the eCommerce marketplace/website.
• The seller lists products on the marketplace/website.
• The buyer searches for the products according to his/her preferences using options like sort and filter.
• The user purchases the item and makes payment through a third party integrated payment system.
• The seller receives the order request.
• The order is packed and delivered to the registered address of the buyer.
• The sellers  make money through the product sales and the owner of the marketplace earns money through the commission and seller membership fee.

Let’s take a look at the Business Model Canvas of Flipkart for a better understanding of a fashion eCommerce business:

Sources of Revenue For The Online Fashion Marketplace

The online marketplace can charge a substantial amount as membership fees. This amount is charged from the vendors in exchange for providing them with an online platform to open a fashion store.

Apart from that, they can also implement different commission rates for different products to different sellers. There might be more possible revenue streams and I am listing two of them below:

• On-site promotion of seller’s brand
• Banner Ads

Market Leaders of Fashion and Apparel E-commerce Marketplace

Undoubtedly, marketplaces like Amazon and eBay are on the top of this leader board. But, here I am presenting the names of some multi vendor marketplaces who have shown extraordinary growth over the last few years.

What is Trending in the Online Fashion Marketplace?

People often believe that collaborating with popular brands will help their marketplace earn whopping profits. But, the reality is that selling big brands does not guarantee the success of your eCommerce store. You have to keep up with the marketing trends and ensure that your audience connects with it. 

Here I am listing a few tricks that will help your online fashion and apparel marketplace go Whoosh!

1. Influencer Strategy: Influencer marketing is a real deal. These days people get more influenced by fashion bloggers than any big-budget commercial ad. All you need to do is collaborate with the industry influencers and let them showcase your brand to the millions of their followers.

2. Celebrity Effect: People follow celebrities all the time! They want to walk like them, talk like them and look like them. Conducting interviews with celebrities or featuring guest interactives can take your marketplace to the next level.

3. Blog Section: Insightful and interesting blogs can add fuel to your online fashion marketplace fire. It is one of the most effective ways to connect with shoppers and spread the word about your eCommerce fashion and apparel marketplace. Style guides and fashion news also helps to retain and to grab the attention of your existing customers.

4. Personalization: It is important to understand user behaviour because information like their purchasing history data, previous orders and browsing behaviour can help a lot in building a connection with the users. Personal recommendations and promotions are the real sales drive in today’s world. 

Must-have Features for the Online Fashion Marketplace

Survival of the fittest is applicable to online shopping marketplaces as well!

If you are planning to start a multi-vendor fashion eCommerce marketplace, I am listing down the features that you need to consider:

1. Customizability: Your eCommerce platform should be easily customizable so that you can make necessary changes according to the evolving needs of the customer. You need to make sure that you build a multi-vendor marketplace that is fully customizable and scalable.

2. Payment Gateways: People always have their preferences when it comes to making payment. Some of us still believe in COD (Cash on delivery), while others are completely up to the online mode of payment. So, iterating multiple payment options gives your customer the freedom to choose the mode they rely on.

3. Product Catalog: This feature helps the eCommerce marketplace owner to manage the products in an efficient manner. The vendors can easily select and add the products to their listing with the pricing. Details like product images, descriptions and other specifications are controlled by the admin of the multi-vendor eCommerce marketplace.

4. Multi-currency: The multi-currency feature is very important if you want to expand your business globally. It is one of the biggest conveniences for the customers as they can get their order billed in their preferred currency unit.

5. Analytics & Reporting: When you are running an online business, it is important to analyze how it works. You need to review the performance of your eCommerce marketplace so that you can make wise decisions in the future. The numbers (visitor statistics, sales, etc.) helps you understand your customer and minimizes the marketing cost.

6. Seamless Product Management: When you own a multi-vendor eCommerce marketplace, you have to manage millions of products. To make it possible, you need a robust product management feature.

An effective eCommerce marketplace is the one where you can easily convert the traffic into sales. To achieve this goal, you need to build a marketplace that is customizable, scalable and has all the above-mentioned features. Now there a 3 ways to build an eCommerce marketplace,

• Code it from scratch
• Build using existing software or platform
• Pay someone else to build for you

The best way to build an eCommerce platform is to use ready-made solutions. Want to know why? Read Choosing Digital Capabilities To Build eCommerce Marketplaces like Amazon or eBay

Choosing the right kind of eCommerce marketplace solution ensures the success of your business. Yo!Kart is an agile eCommerce marketplace solution that can help you develop your own online multi-vendor fashion marketplace. Recently, Yo!Kart new version (Yo!Kart 9.2.0) has been launched with enhanced features and efficient functionality. Click here for a demo.

Content Source: https://www.yo-kart.com/build-fashion-multivendor-marketplace.html