Matches marketplace case study: book a demo to start yours
MatchesFashion, an online luxury fashion retailer, presents a curated array of designer wearables, accessories, and lifestyle goods, appealing to a worldwide audience passionate about high-end, handpicked fashion pieces. If you’d like to start your own marketplace like Matches, you’re facing a buy vs build decision. So before you decide to build it in-house on top of Spree open-source, consider using Vendo, which is the feature-rich Enterprise Edition cutting your time-to-market to a few weeks.
Build vs Buy a marketplace?
Opting for open-source brings various benefits, including complete control and the liberty to customize. However, these advantages often come with substantial financial implications. Creating a complete marketplace solution is a long, expensive process, typically requiring many months or even years. This understanding is based on our experiences with different marketplace projects.
Unless you’ve secured significant funding, it is advisable to opt for a ready-made, comprehensive marketplace solution like Vendo, as recommended by someone who has charged for marketplace development for many years.
Back to the Matches marketplace case study
Matches Fashion, a prominent player in the global online luxury market, offers a diverse selection of over 600 designers, catering to both men and women across more than 176 countries. Established in 1987 as a brick-and-mortar retailer, it successfully transitioned to the online realm in 2007.
Currently, the platform boasts over 130 million site visits annually, with a staggering 95% of its sales occurring online. This digital focus necessitated a robust and varied payment system to enhance customer experience and maximize revenue, especially given its wide-reaching international customer base.
In response to these needs, Matches Fashion collaborated with Stripe to integrate six major global card schemes, including Visa, Mastercard, Amex, JCB, CUP, and Discover, as well as a local card network, Cartes Bancaires. This move streamlined the payment experience, catering to diverse customer preferences.
Additionally, the company leveraged Stripe’s Card Account Updater and Adaptive Acceptance tool, employing machine learning to fine-tune authorization processes. A significant benefit of this partnership was the facilitation of multi-currency settlements, safeguarding Matches Fashion’s profit margins and reducing currency and exchange rate risks.
The results of these initiatives were striking. Within a year, Matches Fashion witnessed a 2.47% increase in authorization rates, translating to an impressive additional £6 million in annual revenue.
This improvement was particularly notable in specific markets, such as France, where the early adoption of local card networks significantly boosted authorization rates. This bespoke approach to each market, focusing on relevant local payment methods and optimizing payment processes, was key to their success, as noted by Lauren Mirynowski, Product Manager at Matches Fashion.
How to emulate Matches marketplace success?
To somewhat mirror Matches achievements, it’s a good idea to launch your marketplace quickly, within weeks rather than months. Assess how well your products suit your audience’s demands and adjust your strategies for attracting customers based on actual feedback.
Experiment with the market before fully committing to its development.
Here’s what you’d be getting with a Vendo free trial:
- Book a marketplace demo call: We’ll set up your demo marketplace and populate it with products, so you could give it a try and start selling in 14 days
- Customize your Storefront: Use the drag & drop page builder or custom CSS
- Onboard Brands: Invite your brands or choose brands from our catalog
- Select Products: Curate products and collections manually or automate it
- Embed products: Make your content, newsletters, social media shoppable
- Get Paid: Get paid as soon as products are shipped by the brands
- End-to-end automation: brands sync, fulfillment, payouts, invoicing, taxes
When you’ve tried all that and it works, start thinking about building your own, custom-made marketplace project based on Spree Commerce. First, by decoupling the storefront and going headless with Vendo marketplace API, and later with your own backend, if you decide you really need it. Just lift and shift the storefront.
Nobody has to know what’s under the hood, right?
