Offering multiple options for purchase in your Magento multivendor ecommerce marketplace is one of the best ways of ensuring a constant stream of sales. Whether you are focussed on one particular niche or have expanded to multiple domains, a diverse supply of products from different vendors is sure to be good for business.
However, with the sheer number of online multivendor marketplaces popping up everywhere vendors a spoiled for choice. So, you need to have an effective strategy for recruiting them for your business. This requires an even mix of persuasive and negotiation skills along with a clear eye on the road ahead.
So, if you are looking to add more vendors to your Magento multivendor marketplace the following tips will help you successfully integrate more vendors into your business.
Top Things to Consider for Bringing New Vendors into Your Multivendor Marketplace
- Consider the Market Conditions
The market saturation will greatly influence the degree to which vendors are willing to provide for your marketplace as well as others. If the market has had widespread uptake, then you will need to offer some unique agreements clauses to entice them into joining your online marketplace. On the other hand, if they are not trusting of online marketplaces, then you will have to convince them of the same. How much business they actually do on their own and how satisfied they are with it will also greatly impact their decision. So, you will need to consider the overall market conditions and the position of your target prospective vendor in it before you approach them with your offer.
- Consider the Product Type
If you have some experience selling a particular type of product, then a new vendor might be able to trust you more easily. For example, if you are selling handwoven carpets from the middle-east and have been doing so successfully, then new vendors will feel more confident about working with you. This will also have to do with the way in which you wish to promote the products and the target market you are aiming for. On the whole, if you help your vendor understand how big a market they can potentially reach through associating with you, then your chances of recruiting them increase significantly.
- Consider the Competition
Every vendor has a certain product value and place in the market. Your job is to assess the viability of the products and understand how they can be sold profitably. Maybe the product is of slightly lower quality than your existing products but is available at a lower price and will help you capture a broader market audience, then it might be worth provided you want to diversify your market in that way. Also, here you must consider how many offers other Magento multivendor marketplace owners are giving the vendor you are looking to recruit. If the product sold by this vendor is of unusually high quality, then you might want to consider an exclusive supply deal just to get the market edge which will entail.
- Consider the Best Vendors and Viable Alternatives
Once you have decided to enter into a particular niche or simply want to expand to new ones, you must have a number of vendors in mind. Basing your future plans on the tentative agreements of any vendor will not be a wise way to move forward. You should have at least two alternative vendors whom you can purchase products from which are of a similar quality level as the product already in your Magento multivendor marketplace extension. This will pad your business with some protection and allow you to seek out more lucrative and profitable opportunities as well.
- Consider the Integration Protocol
Once you have done the paperwork with a vendor, you will need to integrate their products into your online marketplace. So, you are going to need some modifications to the existing system. If you chose a quality multivendor marketplace app to start with, then this should be easy enough and cost very little to no money at all. For others, it might cost some money and you need to consider the best way of integrating them.
For those with the latest multivendor marketplace extension, it is possible to allow the vendor limited access for viewing their product listing. This will help solidify the professional relationship and also enable the vendor to possibly make valuable suggestions for better profitability.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are plenty of factors you need to consider when you are approaching a vendor. The first one among these is how they can help your multivendor marketplace ecommerce platform grow bigger and more profitable.
Other than that, you must also consider all the factors we have mentioned above and some other ones which might be specifically relevant to your niche like technological advancements, required logistical infrastructure, business expansion opportunities and resources etc. All of these factors together will constitute the core of your decision-making protocol and multivendor integration policy in the short and long-run.
