Zageno is a digital platform that links scientists with providers of scientific research supplies and services, simplifying the process of sourcing and acquiring materials for scientific investigations.
If you’d like to start your own marketplace like Zageno, 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?
Open-source has its share of advantages, like total ownership and the freedom to customize. Yet, these perks often involve considerable costs. Developing a complete marketplace solution is a time-consuming and expensive task, usually taking months or years, as we have learned from multiple marketplace projects.
If your funding isn’t huge, it’s more practical to use a pre-built, all-in-one marketplace solution like Vendo, advice from a person who has extensive experience in billing for marketplace development work.
Back to the Zageno marketplace case study
Zageno, a lab supply marketplace, has significantly impacted the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries by streamlining their procurement processes. This platform offers a consolidated shopping, tracking, and controlling experience, allowing scientists to focus more on their research rather than administrative tasks.
One of Zageno’s notable achievements includes aiding a biotech incubator in Cambridge, MA, which scaled up its operations and saved $1.3 million in labor costs. Another case is a biotech company in San Francisco that achieved 91% automation in lab supply ordering, avoiding $132,000 in costs. Additionally, a biotech specializing in protein degradation saved $326,000 by enabling scientists to self-serve lab supply orders.
In North Carolina, an agricultural biotech saved $487,000 using Zageno during a lab move, while a St. Louis-based agricultural biotech diversified supplier spending, which helped reinvest in lab space. Another example is a leading pharma/biotech company in mRNA vaccines that streamlined its lab supply ordering process through Zageno.
These case studies demonstrate Zageno’s effectiveness in enhancing operational efficiency and cost savings across various sectors in the biotech and pharma industries. Its platform not only facilitates cost reduction and time efficiency but also supports the scientific community in focusing on their primary research goals.
How to emulate Zageno marketplace success?
If you’re looking to replicate Zageno’s success, you might want to get your marketplace going sooner, in weeks rather than months. Check how your product lineup matches your audience’s interests and continually refine how you draw in customers based on real-world evidence.
Initially, test the market before investing heavily in building 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?
