Next Marketplace is a UK-based retail destination recognized for its extensive selection of apparel, shoes, and home goods, renowned for offering premium quality products and a solid online shopping experience. If you’d like to start your own marketplace like Next, 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?
Employing open-source technology has its perks, including outright ownership and developmental flexibility, but these come at a substantial price. The journey to build a complete marketplace solution is lengthy and financially demanding, often stretching over months or years. This knowledge comes from our involvement in numerous marketplace projects.
Unless you’ve acquired a considerable sum in funding, it’s advised to opt for an established, comprehensive marketplace solution like Vendo, a suggestion from an individual experienced in charging clients for marketplace development services.
Back to the Next marketplace case study
Next, a big UK clothing company, changed the way it does business. They made a strong online store where other brands can sell their stuff. This store has lots of different companies, like Nike, Levi’s, Clinique, and Ralph Lauren. In the two months before December 25, it grew a lot, by 85%.
Before, Next only had physical stores and catalogs in the 1980s. But in 2006, they started their online store called Next Label. At first, they only sold other brands’ sports clothes as an experiment. But now, it’s the part of their business that grows the fastest. They did this before it became popular in North America.
Next is really good at selling things online and making sure they get to people on time. Because of this, more brands want to sell on their website. They’re also changing a little and becoming a company that helps other businesses sell online. They’re making something called the Total Platform for clients like Victoria’s Secret, Gap, and Reiss. Next has nine big warehouses and two places to send things internationally. This helps other brands use Next’s online selling and shipping abilities.
The Total Platform from Next is a complete service for companies that want to sell online. It takes care of everything, from the website to the behind-the-scenes stuff. They started it in 2020 and have five clients, including Victoria’s Secret and Gap. The platform does different things for each client, like managing Reiss’s website and shipping stuff. Next even partnered with Gap to run their online store on the Total Platform.
Having the online store and the Total Platform together makes Next’s online business even better. It helps other brands a lot with selling online. Smaller and older stores that want to start selling online like Next’s way. They can either sell some things on Next’s website or let Next handle everything for them.
How to emulate Next marketplace success?
In striving for success comparable to Next, plan to launch your marketplace expediently, within weeks instead of months. Assess the alignment of your product catalog with your audience’s needs and modify your customer acquisition plans based on real results.
Test the market before diving into building it yourself.
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?
