The best marketplaces for fashion brands

Marketplaces are a key part of most fashion brands’ success. Even luxury brands, which were slower to adopt online selling, have been enjoying overwhelming success by selling through marketplaces. In fact, 2016 saw high-end fashion retailers take in over $4 billion dollars through marketplace sales – $200 million more than through department stores.

According to Antonio Achille, the head of luxury at consulting firm McKinsey, the success of marketplaces is largely down to their ability to “offer a curated assortment without the risk of carrying the full inventory needed to fuel their growth.” While some marketplaces – such as ASOS – choose to buy a brand’s full inventory and sell it from their own warehouses, others work by merely curating collections on their site, with the brand handling fulfilment themselves.

As the shift towards online shopping became more apparent, hundreds of new marketplaces started to pop up. From mass-market businesses like Amazon and ASOS to more niche options like Curated Crowd and The RealReal, marketplaces have monopolised a large portion of online fashion sales.

There’s no doubt that buying and selling through marketplaces should be a large part of your 2019 ecommerce strategy. But not all marketplaces will be a good fit for your brand – which is why you won’t see Gucci selling through Etsy. To keep things simple, we’ve laid out four of the best B2C and wholesale marketplaces for fashion retailers, as well as how you can use them to grow your business.

Farfetch

Type: B2C

Best for: Luxury fashion brands.

Farfetch is a global retail marketplace for luxury fashion, connecting brands with retailers and customers around the world. As of 2018, Farfetch is home to over 3000 business, from heritage brands to emerging designers. Stocking everything from women and menswear to vintage clothing and fine jewellery, it’s the home of true luxury.

The Farfetch platform is designed as a single operating system to connect the luxury fashion ecosystem worldwide. Existing purely for the love of fashion, Farfetch has an unrivalled range of products from the world’s most exclusive designers, including Gucci, Chloé, Burberry, Jimmy Choo, Valentino and many, many more. Along with access to some of the world’s most luxurious brands, Farfetch also provides inspiration, unique content and other services to help customers navigate the breadth of products available.

If you’re in the luxury niche, selling through Farfetch is a great move for your brand authority. Because they cater exclusively to the premium market, being associated with Farfetch instantly gives your brand a badge of authority. And with thousands of customers turning to Farfetch as a source of luxury fashion, it also helps raise awareness and increase your sales.

Farfetch also makes it easy to sell globally. With localised websites, multilingual support and shipping to 190 countries, the platform guarantees a great shopping experience for customers worldwide. In 19 major cities, your customers can also enjoy access to the ‘F90 store to door’ delivery service, which delivers items to your customers’ door in under 90 minutes.

By promoting your brand to a huge audience, selling through Farfetch is an easy way to help you grow your luxury brand. And with consumers around the world, it’s a great way to help you improve your brand’s awareness.

Looking to integrate Farfetch with your other software? Get in touch here.

ASOS

Type: B2C

Best for: High-end, high-street and growing brands.

ASOS is the granddaddy of all fashion marketplaces. With thousands of brands and a customer base in the millions, it’s the ultimate way for you to increase your sales and gain more exposure for your brand.

Aside from their unrivalled range of products, ASOS’s success comes down to their emphasis on customer experience. With free delivery and returns, pay-later checkout options and an intelligent ‘Fit Assistant’, they strive to give customers an incredible shopping experience. And this great customer service feeds back into your brand – if a customer is happy with your product and the service they received, they associate that feeling with your brand.

Selling through ASOS also gives your brand a seal of approval, helping to improve your authority and awareness. If your products are sold alongside big-name brand like Nike and Calvin Klein, you won’t have the same kind of buyer hesitation that you’d experience when selling to new customers on your own site.

ASOS regularly look to invest in growing and independent brands, making it a great place to accelerate your business growth. Through ASOS Marketplace, a separate ecommerce platform launched by ASOS in 2010, emerging boutiques and designers can sell their products and gather an audience. Buyers at ASOS regularly trawl the ASOS Marketplace site for up-and-coming brands to invest in, so it’s a good place to start if you’ve not yet got the status to sell on the main platform.

JOOR

Type: Wholesale

Best for: Global brands and retailers.

JOOR is a leading online fashion marketplace for wholesale buying, connecting some of the world’s biggest brands and retailers. Designed to streamline the wholesale process, JOOR gives retailers and buyers one handy platform to submit orders from multiple brands.

Unlike marketplaces such as ASOS and Farfetch, JOOR focuses on the B2B side of fashion. By signing up to JOOR, you get access to one of the largest indexes of retailers and brands. Rather than digging through your emails to find attachments, you can browse the latest line sheets in one easy place. Once you find a retailer or brand you like, you can request to connect, saving the hassle of searching for contact details.

Since its inception in 2010, JOOR has grown to be one of the world’s largest wholesale fashion marketplaces, processing over $7 billion dollars of orders in 2015. Over 155,000 retailers and 1,500 brands worldwide use the platform, including Barneys, Harrods, Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Free People, and many more.

With specifically designed apps for both brands and retailers, JOOR makes wholesale simpler – regardless of whether you’re buying or selling. For retailers, JOOR offers the Retail App. By enabling you to take photos and tag products during runway shows and market appointments, the Retail App makes it easier than ever to get organised. You can also analyse your collections by brand, trend, colour, or by creating your own tags. For brands, JOOR has an Orders App, with a centralised network to showcase and sell your collections.

By saving you hours of circling line sheets and writing orders, the JOOR platform means less wasted time. Essentially, it helps your business get better.

Looking to integrate JOOR with your other software? Get in touch here.

NuORDER

Type: Wholesale

Best for: Brands of any size or niche.

NuORDER is a platform that works to streamline the wholesale buying process, providing brands and retailers with a central hub to browse products, access real-time inventory data and place orders online. With over 600 brands and 100,000 retailers, it’s a great way to build relationships and increase your orders.

Unlike JOOR, which is designed solely for fashion niches, NuORDER accommodates a wide range of brands. From Ted Baker and Lacoste to Moleskine and Beats by Dre, NuOrder helps digitise the B2B buying process for almost any industry.

With hundreds of brands and over $1 billion in orders processed every year, NuORDER puts you in front of some of the biggest brands and retailers in the industry. And no more hours’ wasted writing up paper orders, the platform helps you decrease the overall costs of wholesale.