Anthropologie is a prominent U.S. store known for its unique blend of clothing, accessories, home furnishings, and lifestyle goods, all characterized by their bohemian-chic aesthetics and diverse designs, serving women who appreciate artistic and one-of-a-kind fashion.
If you’d like to start your own marketplace like Anthropologie, 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 a marketplace SaaS. Go live, start selling, iterate.
Build vs Buy a marketplace?
Leveraging open-source can be advantageous, offering complete control and the freedom to customize. However, these advantages often entail significant expenses. The creation of a full-scale marketplace solution is a prolonged and costly process, typically lasting several months to years. This insight is drawn from various marketplace project experiences.
Unless you have access to substantial funding, it’s usually more prudent to go with a ready-made, all-encompassing marketplace solution like Vendo, as recommended by someone with a long history of billing for marketplace development.
Back to the Anthropologie marketplace case study
Anthropologie, a well-known name in online markets, presents an interesting story of growth and connecting with customers. It started in the early 1990s as a single store in Pennsylvania and has now become a successful online marketplace, famous for its unique vintage-style products.
This transformation happened in 1998 when they began selling online, using the internet to reach customers worldwide. Anthropologie’s success comes from carefully selecting products that attract a specific audience interested in vintage fashion and handmade home goods, providing a personalized shopping experience.
Anthropologie has adapted while staying true to its roots, reaching out to younger customers through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, all part of their strategy to test new ways of connecting with consumers.
Their physical stores are essential too, offering a unique shopping experience that complements their online presence. They focus on creativity and customer inspiration in-store, maintaining a boutique feel rather than a chain store vibe.
Anthropologie also gets into clothing rental and resale through Nuuly, catering to a broader range of customers and keeping a focus on quality and sustainability, showing their commitment to their brand identity.
How to emulate Anthropologie marketplace success?
To follow in the footsteps of Anthropologie’s success, think about quickly launching your marketplace, opting for weeks over months. Make sure your product catalog aligns with your audience’s preferences and continually adjust your methods for attracting customers, drawing on actual outcomes.
Test the market before making a full commitment to build it.
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?
