Know the Origin marketplace vendor image

Know The Origin is a clothing brand and online shop dedicated to ethical fashion, emphasizing sustainability, transparency, fair pay, and eco-friendly practices within the clothing industry.

If you’d like to start your own marketplace like Know The Origin, 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?

The decision to use open-source has many upsides, such as having full ownership and the flexibility to modify as needed, but these benefits come at a price. Building a complete marketplace solution is a lengthy and costly venture, often extending over months or years, as observed from various marketplace projects.

Unless you’ve raised a considerable amount of funding, a pre-packaged, all-in-one marketplace solution like Vendo is usually a better choice, advice from a person with extensive experience in charging for marketplace development.

Back to the Know The Origin marketplace case study

Know The Origin is a unique marketplace that has set a new standard in sustainability by offering products from ethical brands. The primary goal of this platform is to establish robust sustainable standards and bring together transparent brands that adhere to these principles. This approach ensures that customers are fully informed about the origins and processes involved in the creation of the products they purchase.

To increase awareness of their distinct approach to fashion and sustainable living, Know The Origin embarked on a digital marketing campaign. This included the creation of digital ads for social media platforms, aimed at driving traffic and sales through their eCommerce site. 

The ad sets created each month were diverse, including video, stories, and carousel ads. These ads highlighted the drawbacks of fast fashion and consumerism while showcasing Know The Origin’s commitment to ethical and sustainable standards.

The marketing efforts for Know The Origin, particularly through social media advertising, are a testament to the effectiveness of digital strategies in promoting sustainable and ethical consumerism.

The success of this campaign demonstrates the power of targeted digital marketing in promoting sustainable and ethical consumerism, and it provides valuable insights for businesses looking to engage in similar practices.

How to emulate Know The Origin marketplace success?

Aiming for Know The Origin-like success, consider starting your marketplace soon, ideally within weeks, not months. Explore how your product range fits with what your customers need and keep tweaking your customer acquisition techniques based on real findings.

It’s smart to test the market before fully investing in its creation.

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?