Do you own your customers?
In their latest blog Business Network South Manchester members Alex and Paul Dodgshon of Uscita look at the online market place and who has ownership of the customers who purchase your products and services.
Online marketplaces provide an efficient, effective selling platform for product based businesses across the world. Sites such as Amazon, eBay and Etsy give you instant access to a global shop window with the ability to target customers who are actively searching to buy products like yours. With 500 million monthly visitors to Etsy alone, it’s easy to see why so many businesses are drawn to these platforms to build their businesses.
According to Amazon, there are more than 85,000 UK SMEs selling in its online marketplace. eBay has 300,000 small business sellers and Etsy had at least 960,000 (in 2021). This gives these big three sites a great deal of power and control over the businesses and customers that use them.
In this blog we’ll be looking at the risk and reward of selling products through a third party website versus selling through a website you own, and how selling through an online marketplace could impact the future growth and exit value of your business.
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