Catch of the Decade

CHAPTER 15The marketplace beckons

For the uninitiated, a marketplace is a website where sellers congregate to offer their goods to an aggregated audience. Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Airbnb and Uber are all marketplaces, and you could say they've all been reasonably successful. We had our own marketplace with Menulog, and that worked pretty well for us, too. In 2020, the word on every marketer's lips was ‘marketplace’. Other than COVID‐19, it was the hottest topic in town. Every industry needs a marketplace and every entrepreneur wants to own one. The only trouble is, you need big bucks, and even bigger balls, to build one. They're not for the faint‐hearted. Creating a marketplace made sense for a multitude of reasons. It stacked up strategically and solved a lot of issues. It was a:

• capital‐light model. This meant we could offer more products without needing to buy more products, add more warehouse space or hire more packing staff.
• scalable model. If we didn't need to buy the goods, we didn't need to photograph, pack and ship them either. We could add millions of new products without adding overheads, and run the entire marketplace operation on a shoestring.
• compelling offer. If we offered more products, we attracted more shoppers, which generated more traffic, which increased sales. If we increased sales, we attracted more suppliers, at which point, the network effect* would kick in.
• destination website. After a decade of attracting the shopper with ‘surprise’ deals, we could ...