The Muse Marketplace is a digital venue that focuses on showcasing and selling goods from female-led businesses. Its mission is to encourage and support women by providing a specially selected range of products from women-owned brands, with an emphasis on sustainable, eco-friendly practices and collaborative efforts.
If you’d like to start your own marketplace like The Muse, 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 Muse marketplace case study
The Muse marketplace, founded by Alexis Fox, stands as a unique and successful example in the e-commerce sector, particularly known for its dedication to promoting female-founded products.
This online platform offers an array of items including apparel, accessories, beauty products, home goods, and more. The Muse is not just a commercial marketplace; it’s a community that champions and empowers women-owned businesses, providing them with a platform to showcase and sell their creations.
Key factors that contribute to The Muse’s success include its exclusive focus on products created by women-owned businesses, its commitment to offering handmade and American-made goods, and a diverse range of products.
This business model not only supports local artisans but also assures customers of the quality and authenticity of the products they are purchasing. The Muse’s unique selling proposition resonates strongly with consumers who are keen to support and celebrate female entrepreneurship.
The inception of The Muse is a story of passion and resilience. Alexis Fox, the CEO and Founder, was driven by a vision to create a space where women-owned businesses could thrive. This vision stemmed from the shared experiences of women who have faced pivotal moments in their lives, highlighting the strength and creativity of female entrepreneurs.
Building a community around your brand and engaging with your audience through storytelling and shared values is also pivotal. Offering a variety of products caters to different customer preferences, ensuring a broader customer base and increased revenue streams.
How to emulate The Muse marketplace success?
To replicate The Muse success, you should consider debuting your marketplace rapidly, within weeks rather than months. Evaluate how your products fit with your audience’s requirements, and fine-tune your methods of gaining customers based on real-world data.
First, test the market before investing in its full-scale 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?
