The Online Marketplace Advantage

6Feeding the Flywheel – Scaling Your Marketplace

At this point, you understand the vision and have committed to the transformation that a marketplace can bring to your enterprise. For months, you've been carefully preparing for it. You can see the launch on the horizon. Now it's a matter of finding the right moment.

If there is one thing that our experience has shown us about this point in the marketplace journey, it's this: you can't wait until your marketplace feels “perfect” to schedule the launch. The marketplace is not and will never be a finished product. And that's OK. You'll continue to adjust to valuable streams of customer feedback.

Dan Finley, CEO of Debenhams, the iconic British retailer, puts it this way: “If you aim for perfection, I'm not so sure that day ever comes. You can get stuck on a roadmap. You can be drowned in politics and bureaucracy, and the opportunity ends up sifting through your hands like sand.” It's vital, he says, to “get money in the till. More sales, more customers. That builds momentum.”

Until you launch, you're flying in the fog of ignorance. At this point, you don't know what you don't know. It will be infinitely easier to see things, and to make adjustments once the marketplace springs to life and customer data starts pouring in. Customers will tell you with great clarity what they want and expect from you, and how much they're willing to pay for it. Those amount to your marching orders. And as you respond to them, you're likely to see ...