Multivendor marketplaces are leading the eCommerce industry. But like any other online venture, establishing a marketplace also comes with a lot of challenges. One of the biggest challenges is finding vendors for your marketplace.
Unable to find and connect with vendors are two major reasons why a lot of marketplaces fail at their very beginning.
However, with our years of experience in helping many multivendor marketplaces grow, we know exactly how you can attract vendors for your marketplace.
In this blog, we will explain to you how to find vendors and successfully onboard them into your marketplace. So let's get to it!
What is a Vendor for eCommerce Business?
A vendor for an eCommerce business is a person or company that supplies products or services that the eCommerce business sells to its customers. Vendors can be;
- manufacturers,
- wholesalers,
- or even individual sellers who provide the goods that are listed on the eCommerce platform.
For instance, if you run an online store that sells electronics, your vendors might include companies that manufacture phones, laptops, or accessories, which you then offer to your customers through your online store.
Why Are Finding Vendors Important for Your Online Business?
Vendors are considered as the pillars of a multivendor marketplace. The more quality vendors you have, the more your marketplace will attract customers.
Now let's find the reasons why you should be looking for vendors:
- Product Availability and Quality: Reliable vendors offer a wide range of products that meet quality standards, ensuring customer satisfaction and preventing stockouts.
- Cost Efficiency: Vendors often provide competitive pricing, bulk discounts, and efficient order fulfillment, contributing to higher profit margins.
- Operational Efficiency: By outsourcing product sourcing and shipping, you can focus on core business activities and reduce operational costs.
- Risk Mitigation: Diversifying your supplier base helps protect your business from supply chain disruptions and reduces inventory risks.
- Business Growth: Strong vendor relationships can support your business expansion by providing the necessary resources and flexibility to meet increasing demand.
Having more vendors also gives your marketplace stability, as a result, your supply chain stays intact even if some vendors face any issues.
How to Find Vendors for your Multivendor Marketplace?
We've already talked about the importance of vendors in a multivendor marketplace. However, for a new marketplace, finding vendors can seem to be an uphill task. That's because most of the new marketplace owners don't know where to start when it comes to acquiring vendors.
If you're one of them, you have come to the right place. Here is how to find vendors for your multivendor marketplace.
Here's how you can find vendors for your marketplace-
- Promote Your Marketplace Online
- Find Sellers Offline
- Connect with Vendors from Merchant Associations
Now, let's see the details-
1. Promote Your Marketplace Online
There is no better way to promote your multivendor marketplace than promoting it online. There is rarely any business that is still not online so promoting your marketplace online can help you connect with them. So how exactly can you do that? Below are the ways.
a) Promote on Social Media
Promoting on social media is the first thing that you need to do. Why?
It is because of the sheer number of people that use social media, which amounts to almost 49% of the total population on the earth. And you can be sure that most of the vendors are already on social media, selling their product or created a business profile.
So rather than searching for them everywhere, reach the vendors where they already are, in social media.
b) Promote using Ads
The Internet has become part of our lifestyle. Even if your vendors are not on social media, they must need to use other websites for their day to day tasks, right?
That is why ad networks play a vital role in reaching people. You can target your ads based on their online behavior, so it will be easy for you to find vendors who sell exactly the type of products that you need on your site.
c) Promote to the Right Audience
Whether you are promoting your marketplace using an ad network or on social media, you have to pick the right audience. If you can't target your promotion to the right audience, all the hard work will be in vain.
Using keywords smartly and knowing the type of vendors you want can help you find the type of vendors for your site.
2. Find Sellers Offline
It is the era of digitalization. Even offline giants like Walmart are now selling online to keep up with the consumer trend. But despite these the emergence of online business worldwide, many businesses are still operating only offline.
This type of business relies on word of mouth and goodwill. However, if you are smart enough, you already know the importance of onboarding these types of sellers in your marketplace. Yes, you will get access to their existing customers and while helping the sellers sell on your platform more conveniently.
3. Connect with Vendors from Merchant Associations
Every type of business has its associations. Depending on the type of products you want to sell on your marketplace, you can contact the relevant association and find the vendors easily.
This is the best, and easiest way to find sellers offline for most new marketplace owners.
a) Contact your Vendors Directly
If you know any sellers who can be perfect for your marketplace, you can also contact them directly to sell on your marketplace. Though it's unlikely that you will find a lot of vendors this way, you can, however, find some well-known names in the market and board them to sell on your marketplace. This will increase the sales and credibility of your marketplace.
b) Use Word of Mouth
And lastly the traditional one. Offer your existing vendors some exciting deals so that they inspire other sellers to sell on your website. Consistently finding vendors in a passive way can be the best thing to happen for your website.
You can also increase the chance of your vendors spreading the words of your offerings by giving referral bonuses to your existing vendors.
Attract & Convince Vendors for your Multivendor Marketplace
One of the queries we get often is “how to find vendors”. But finding vendors is not the only challenge for a multivendor marketplace, rather it is the start of the challenge. Attracting the vendors to sell on your website will be another challenge that you will face afterward.
With so many multi-vendor marketplaces around, why would they sell on your site? Well, you have to offer them a deal they can not reject! 😉
- Offer the Vendors a Better Offer by Researching Your Competitor
- Make the Onboarding Process Easy
- Create a Seamless Experience with Your Website
- Make The Payments Process Smooth
01. Offer the Vendors a Better Offer by Researching Your Competitor
Researching your competitor will give you an idea of what your competitors are offering to the vendors. How much commission are they offering? Are they giving any incentive for reaching sales goals?
These insights will help you offer the vendors a better deal. You can also get an idea of industry-standard through this type of analysis.
02. Make the Onboarding Process Easy
Yes, it matters. Many of your vendors won't bother signing up on a new marketplace if it's not straightforward to do so.
So make the onboarding process super easy and ask for lesser documents. This will put a positive impact on your overall vendor acquisition.
03. Create a Seamless Experience with Your Website
Creating a website that is fast, featureful, and easy to use, can make vendors like your website more. One of the easiest ways to build such a website is by using WordPress and Dokan Multivendor plugin.
WordPress makes it very easy to build a website without any prior coding skills. Using Dokan, you can even make a multivendor website by yourself. If you face any problem along the way, the Dokan team is always there to support you.
04. Make The Payments Process Smooth
Even if you acquire many vendors, you'll not be able to retain the vendors, if you don't pay them on time. Moreover, if you pay timely you will have a good reputation which it will automatically bring more sellers.
Many new multivendor fail just because they fail to pay their vendors on time which results in the loss of valuable sellers.
How to Find Get Vendors for eCommerce Site – Final Words
The biggest of the big like Amazon, AliExpress, eBay do not give any extra effort to acquire the seller. This is because they have reached a position of supremacy.
But as the owner of a new multivendor marketplace, you have to give some extra effort to find and acquire vendors. With time, as you get more visitors to your website, you will also be able to get vendors even without trying much.
If you want to enhance your vendor registration form, you should check our tutorial on customizing the vendor registration form using the Dokan plugin.
Want to share anything related to this article? Feel free to do that using the comment box below. We would love to know your thoughts. Happy selling!