How Spreadshirt sells through marketplaces

Online clothing and accessories retailer Spreadshirt turns over nearly £60 million a year. CEO Philip Rooke explains how he boosts sales using third-party marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon.

How has your business grown since we last spoke?

Spreadshirt has continued to grow globally and particularly in the US market, where the social media and Youtube market has brought many new celebrities such as George Takai into the Spreadshirt platform.

The most exciting development in the last six months has been the beginning of our External Marketplace programme, where the best selling products on Spreadshirt or from the Whitelabel shop programme are now listed on third-party marketplaces like Amazon.

This allows our merchandising sellers to reach wider audiences with their products increasing their return on investment in merchandising.

-          When did you start selling through third-parties and what prompted the move?

Spreadshirt started a trial last year with Amazon and found that Amazon customers loved the ideas being put in front of them. Amazon shoppers are often searching for ideas around their interests and this is how they are discovering merchandising ideas from Spreadshirt.

Marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay have built up very loyal audiences that love their product and approach to business. They are able to then develop a marketplace because they own the customer.

The best sites become shopping hubs for their customers; 30% of e-shopping journeys in the US start with Amazon (Forester 2012) and with over 75m visitors every month Amazon probably has more shopping journeys than Google in an average month.

This multi-channel approach is expected to continue growing. Our shop partners who use the Spreadshirt platform to sell their ideas and merchandising want to get as much return on investment as they can from their efforts, therefore it makes sense to sell their ideas and merchandising where ever the consumer is.

We have always offered our shop partners a choice of their own whitelabel shops as well as our Spreadshirt consumer business; 3rd party marketplaces and then onto other 3rd party retailers is the next logical steps for our platform.

-          Who do you work with and how have they added to your sales?

The goal of the Spreadshirt model is to make it extremely easy for designers, organisations and brands to take their ideas to market using the platform in a risk-free way, with print-on-demand, and through a number of different points of sale. This maximizes the connection between consumers seeking products they love to wear, use, and carry to the ideas and opportunities offered by designers, brands, and organisations.

At the moment we have just extended to Amazon in the US, UK, Germany and France.  However, we are also in negotiations with other marketplaces and retailers to gain listings for our selling partners.

-          What is the best practice in terms of listing and marketing your items on third parties?

In the first place it would seem easy to just list items on third-parties marketplaces. But actually these third parties are very demanding, they have their own restrictions in terms of what is acceptable design content, very high delivery/service expectations and each needs to be managed in terms of ROI on effort. There are many pitfalls that can happen to the inexperienced seller on third-party marketplaces.

Spreadshirt was created to solve problems for designers, organisations and brands that have creative and brilliant ideas they want to put onto merchandising.

But we have not found it easy to put these ideas onto Amazon: every design has to be double checked to match Amazon’s requirements, Amazon customers are not aware that we are using print-on-demand technology to supply these choices, which makes for longer delivery times and finally Amazon customers review everything so problems can become public very fast.

Luckily for our partners the Spreadshirt team enjoys solving these issues and we are geared to it.  I wouldn’t like to have to do deal with these issues without the other 200 Spreadshirt team members!

-          How do you keep track of sales and fulfilment in a diverse sales portfolio?

All orders created at any point of sale (Spreadshirt shops, whitelabel shops, API integrations, Amazon or any other third-parties) come back into our single central platform. This platform was designed to create “virtual merchandise” products, place them for sale, handle the transaction, delivery and then accurately pay the original owner for their idea.

In the end every order looks the same to the platform regardless of the point of sale, the order then goes to a unique network of local factories on an international scale: two in the EU and two in the US.  This ensures that products get produced locally and fast.

-          What are the constraints of selling through these channels?

We have to comply with the T&Cs of each of these channels while at the same time offering consumers a wide range of choice.  Be ready for them to change. These third-parties are continuously growing and changing their businesses. So what they demand today may change next week.

The biggest challenge also facing Spreadshirt is to continually simplify use for the sellers through our platform despite the many offerings of products and services that can add complexity to the platform. Adding more channels to sell has to be done without adding complexity.

During the next one to two years, we will continue our very user-centric approach in making our service far simpler to use.  Our goal is for ideas to be published for sale within 60 seconds, on all 140 products, at all points of sale (including our third-party marketplaces for best-selling products), and in all countries- instantly.

-          Do you plan to expand your third-party sales?

We are talking to other marketplaces and retailers about listing products from the Spreadshirt platform.  Eventually we expect to have as many as 20 opportunities running.

-          What are your three best tips for selling through third parties?

I have only one tip and it is a big one.

Do not think of third-parties as being marketing channels. They are retailers and you are a supplier to them so they can sell to their customers. Good third-parties like Amazon are very customer orientated. So every plan you make to work with a third-party must start with a desire to work out what their customers want.

If their customers are happy, the third-party will be happy and you will be happy too.

For more information visit: www.spreadshirt.co.uk