Macy’s is opening up its e-commerce platform to third-party sellers—a practice Amazon has thrived at for years.
Key Details
- Macy’s is joining the likes of Amazon as it opens its website to outside sellers.
- As online shopping continues to take off, retailers are looking for easy ways to add more inventory.
- By creating a third-party marketplace, Macy’s now has more products to offer and will not have to store or manage the goods.
Why it’s news
Third-party marketplaces aren’t news in themselves, but retail giants adopting them is. Particularly an old-school enterprise such as Macy’s.
Amazon and Walmart have both offered items from other sellers for a while, but with online shopping continuing to rise others are beginning to hop on board.
Inventory management has been an issue for Macy’s and other major retailers, which have been stuck with too many goods on hand that they can’t sell, according to Axios writer Hope King.
Creating a third-party marketplace could help reduce the risk of that going forward, says Macy’s chief digital and customer officer, Matt Baer. Doing so also enables Macy’s to test different brands, styles and trends with customers, as well as develop relationships with new sellers, he adds.
How it works
If you are familiar with Amazon you have a relative understanding of how a third-party retail space works.
Businesses who use this service will have a self-service type platform where sellers can submit product listings to the company for approval.
The company will have to approve of all products and has final say on what goes on its website.
Items listed on the website by a third-party seller will say in the description that it is being shipped and sold by a different company.
This way of selling products makes it easier on the company as a whole. Instead of Macy’s having warehouses full of products that potentially won’t sell, it can just offer products from other companies and it doesn’t have to worry about having storage for the products or whether they will sell or not.