Buy.com and the White-Label Marketplace
July 29, 2010 
1 Comment
The marketplace niche is heating up as Buy.com plans to roll out a new white-label marketplace to be placed on retailer sites. This is an interesting approach for the mass merchant. After Buy.com got purchased by Rakuten Inc., they have really changed the way that they look at the online marketplace arena. Buy.com has allowed third part sellers to sell the same items that they list on their website. It has provided some more revenue that Buy.com might have lost when items were out of stock. This is the same approach that Amazon created when it started its marketplace, which is much older than Buy’s.
The white-label marketplace will be hosted by Buy.com and will give third party retailers the option of allowing their customers to purchase the over 7.5 million sku’s that Buy.com currently has listed. This will really open the offering that many retailers currently have and possibly bring a lot more traffic to these retailers. Buy is currently only working with a small subset of retailers, mostly ones that have national stores. Once they get this roll-out done, then they plan on opening it up to small and medium size retailers. This will change the game for these type of retailers as they will receive a commission from Buy.com and the other seller that are part of the Buy.com marketplace. This can help any lost sales that small retailers might get for out of stock products as well as really open up the product offering.
I think this is a good move for Buy.com as they will really open up their sku’s to other retailers and other sites. This could bring them more traffic and more sales. It looks like this is a way to more directly compete with Amazon and it might open the eyes of Amazon a little more. They might take head and try to create something similar to keep Buy.com from gaining ground. Amazon already has a partner program, but that is not the same thing as what Buy.com plans to offer. This should be good for the industry and it will really help out smaller sellers with succeeding online. If you are a small retailer, then put this on your radar as they plan on opening it up to you later on this year, which means you probably will be able to integrate by first quarter 2011.
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Best article and it’s really interesting. It’s helpful to all. Thanks for posting this article.