Pixplace and PlayTrade – the future of marketplaces?
Aug-2008
I have just been taking a look at Pixplace – the third party marketplace from Pixmania. The site works on a very similar basis to amazon marketplace and playtrade with third party sellers selling their products alongside the website’s own products.
In essence a marketplace = way of displaying products + visitors + payment mechanism. High volume retail sites have the traffic and collect millions of pounds of payments and so only require a mechanism for uploading third party products. As Amazon has found, allowing other sellers onto the plaform can increase inventory and boost revenue.
I wonder whether this paradigm, as opposed to stand alone marketplaces like edirectory and several others in the pipeline, will become a new force in online marketplaces alongside eBay and Amazon? Perhaps we will see the likes of Argos and John Lewis jumping on the bandwagon? I do slightly worry that Pixmania are selling products outside their core area e.g. home and garden and clothing but this is probably what people said to amazon when they moved away from books…….
eDirectory needs to market their site much more. I joined within the last year, paid a lump sum and spent many hours setting up tedious .csv files only not to have one order! They are nowhere near the likes of ebay or Amazon.
The internet has no rules what you can sell online as ebay has proven. The likes of play.com and amazon have realised this and decided to cash in on it. I can see more doing this in the future.