Online marketplaces are a great way to sell products and services. They're like digital shopping malls where consumers can purchase from a variety of merchants on one site. ReCapturit is an online marketplace that specializes in one area – architectural salvage and recaptured building supplies. According to Digital Commerce 360 (2021), 92% of consumers shop on online marketplaces, and 42% purchased on a niche marketplace that focuses on specific verticals. Joining an online marketplace is faster and less expensive than creating your own ecommerce website from scratch, and puts you in front of hundreds to millions of potential buyers almost instantly.
Spend any time on the internet researching online marketplaces though, and you’ll find articles about risk. ReCapturit is committed to being a resource for information on architectural salvage. A resource for both buyers and sellers. With that in mind, we’d like to share some of the main risks we’ve found with marketplace websites, as well as the steps ReCapturit has taken to make sure the rewards on our site outweigh the risks you might find out there alone, or on another marketplace site.
5 Risks:
1. Lower Margins — Every online marketplace has fees. Monthly service fees, per-item charges, shipping costs and referral fees. Pair that with sometimes stiff price competition, and you’ve got a risk sellers can’t ignore.
We get it. The cost to deconstruct, transport, and prepare an item to be sold in-store can make some margins very thin. Which is why our onboarding team is here to help! We have a pretty good idea of what’s profitable and what’s not, and we’re fairly certain you do too. We don’t want you to sell anything that won’t make you money. Especially when there are so many recaptured items that will.
When you set up your Seller Store, we’ll work with you to generate your "grand opening” list of products. Items that are the most likely to be in high demand, sell quickly, and showcase the special things that only YOU can bring to the market.
2. Surprise Fees — added costs the marketplace doesn’t tell you about, or changes with little to no notice. Examples include increased service fees, and unsolicited ads that cost you an extra chunk of your sale.
Luckily, the internet is a market that thrives on transparency. Business owners expect to find accurate information about price & service features before they buy, and being met with a surprise fee they weren’t expecting will send them packing. We don’t want that. So….we don’t have surprise fees. (Click here to see our prices, or email us to get a copy of the "How it Works” one-sheet.)
3. Branding — Sellers on marketplace websites often have no control over how their brand is displayed. Searches are centered around the item only, offering little opportunity for you to stand out from the crowd.
ReCapturit features our sellers. We want your storefront to be unique, and we want your buyers to be able to find you by name. In our marketing, in our search, in the listing, and by direct link to your personalized storefront. (We’ll even make you a cool QR code to share with your friends.)
4. Misleading Mass Produced Landfill Clogging Crap — (No, we don’t have strong feelings about this.) Upcycling is big business and reclamation’s hot! This has sent manufacturers and retailers alike scurrying to find cheap "retro” reproductions to sell to consumers. Not always at lower cost, but usually at much lower quality. Thus lowering the perceived value of your authentic merchandise. For some, that’s not a problem.
For us, it is. ReCapturit was built exclusively for architectural salvage. For reclaimed building materials, construction leftovers, and other items that have been recaptured for reuse. Products that were bought or used for another purpose first. That aren’t being used for that purpose now, but absolutely aren’t ready for the dump. Will you find a "new” item or two on our site? Sure. But you won’t find anything that was manufactured to be sold first on ReCapturit.com (At least not building materials. We might sell tee-shirts someday. Do you want one?)
*New item examples: doors or windows that didn’t fit the opening or didn’t end up fitting the aesthetic. Items that builders ordered too much of, but can’t return. Items that really grand plans but got lost in the warehouse/factory/barn/basement.
5. Products Sold By the Marketplace — When a marketplace carries their own products, and many of them do, they stand to become one of your biggest competitors. Do you have a product that’s doing well? They might start sourcing and selling it too. Their access to all of the sales data, and an interest in selling their own stuff too, paves the way for a conflict of interest that could have lasting results.
No conflicts of interest here! ReCapturit doesn’t have its own inventory. We are wholly focused on the successful sales of your inventory. We don’t have a salvage yard, a warehouse, or even those tee-shirts we mentioned above. (Yet.) We do have an example store though: Rescued Reusables. We want to be transparent about that. It was created by one of our employees, as an example space and testing ground for our development team and our new sellers. That’s it.
The Wrap Up - Risks vary for every seller, and that there are A LOT of options when it comes to Online Marketplaces. If you’re here, you’re probably here for Architectural Salvage, which is great! Because when it comes to THAT niche, there’s just one! Making your decision about where to be that much easier. Interested in opening your own store on the only online marketplace built EXCLUSIVELY for recaptured building materials? Head over to our seller page.
Thanks for reading.