So here’s a problem that I think you guys haven’t fully digested yet. You want to be the Amazon of steroids, but you’re conveniently forgetting that Amazon was not a profitable enterprise for over a decade. Part of the reason they’re so profitable now is AWS, which obviously you can’t replicate. Instead you’re taking a 5% vig from vendors and buyers are still paying the same for shipping that they would be if they ordered direct. And prices are higher than buying direct, which is the opposite of the Amazon model.
Colonial charges $100 for his primo. On your site he charges $110. Subtract the $5 that you extract and he makes more selling through you, which means the customer isn’t getting a deal. The value add isn’t there for us as consumers.
The Amazon model worked because they were allowed to incinerate cash at a hilarious rate for many years without anyone caring. This gave them time to scale up. Your ability to scale up has a ceiling. Your willingness to lose money is probably not in the same ballpark as Amazon’s. You have a nice idea here, but it’s not quite what it needs to be to truly work. You need a ton of vendors—good ones—to get on board. So it has to be attractive to them. Doing more volume in an illegal business is significantly harder than if you’re on Amazon selling school supplies or humidifiers or deodorant. So these vendors need to know that the added volume is worth it, which means they need to see a big enough bump in sales to justify the 5% fee. Customers need to see it as a good deal or else they’ll just buy directly from the source. You almost need to have a centralized warehouse where sources send to you and you ship out, with huge discounts on shipping for the customer. There’s simply no way you can safely or economically do that. I like the idea and I wish you well. But I see this as more of a solution to a problem that wasn’t there. You’re close, but not quite there.
Edit: Now that I think about you guys aren’t Amazon. Giving a ready made storefront isn’t an Amazon model, that’s the Shopify model. Veeeery different animal.
I understand the concern you are having, but you needn't worry. Brewly is not a distributor like Amazon. Perhaps it was a misstep, but when I talk about Brewly being "like amazon", that is in regards to the experience:
1. Add items to cart
2. Pay
3. Check order updates in dash
Ez pz
With regards to Colonial, that is merely one vendor who chose to increase his prices. That is his decision, and I'm sure it will reflect on him when people keep buying from other vendors. I strongly believe this competition will push vendors to lower prices and better services than ever before, because now their
income is held directly accountable by the customer. How? Because products are sorted/ranked similar to the way they are on Amazon. If you don't make customers happy, it will directly affect your performance.
I wouldn't make the Shopify conclusion because we're an entire platform. Yes, you can have your own independent storefront, but Amazon is the same way. It's just that no one really uses it for the most part. People find products by searching through the home-page and seeing items from
all vendors.
So what's the main sell for the customer?
Convenience
It's as easy as using Amazon. No matter if you buy from one vendor or ten, you pay once and go on your merry way. All updates are in the dashboard, and you can even do direct real-time messaging with the vendor all on site.
Security
AES-256, PGP, Manual shipping info deletion, manual message deletion, able to wipe full account (orders, reviews, messages, email, everything) at any time
Soon,
fund protection. We will rolling out a formal order dispute system so you can recover your funds in the event of bad product/testing/scam/etc. A formal, guaranteed way to keep your funds safe.
Power
You can directly affect a vendor's products visibility and ranking by your reviews. When have you ever been able to do that so directly and efficiently in the AAS world. Also, the free-for-all nature of this multi-vendor marketplace will promote competition between vendors, lowering prices and improving service with time.