I've recently moved to New York from Athens, Greece and constantly looking for ideas that could help -professionally- my friends back home. Despite the difficult economic situation the country has been into for almost 10 years now, there are lots of talented young people who are determined to succeed and they deserve every bit of help they can get.
The online marketplace concept -where one can place and sell products- should not be new to those of you who make their own -and if it is- start here by reading this article. If you still -for whichever reason- haven't joined a marketplace and don't have your online store up and running, here comes Tictail. Clean, beautiful design, looks amazing on desktop and the mobile app. You can set up shop FREE and start selling your products right away. You will not pay any commission on the sales coming from shoppers who discover you and make their first purchase through your store, however you will pay a 10% on sales coming from those who discover and make their first purchase of your products through Tictail's marketplace. Payments are handled by external applications like Klarna, Stripe and Paypal and those usually charge a separate fee, keep that in mind. (Update: Tictail was acquired by Shopify, a great platform to build your eshop on)
What's also cool about Tictail is that a curated selection of products listed on their marketplace gets the chance to be exhibited in Tictail's physical store on 90 Orchard street in New York. I know what you are thinking... time for your local brand to go global.
And for all my friends in fashion, stylists, bloggers, creators, here's something to get you even more passionate about what you do: RewardStyle is a platform that makes sure fashion bloggers will be compensated for their commitment to quality blogging, from the brands and products they love. Watch the presentation it is very interesting and eye-opening. They also came up with the brilliant liketoknow.it which produces clickable links-to-buy for fashion items on Instagram posts.
No doubt we will be seeing more platforms from now on, businesses that create value and get paid by making it easier for buyers, influencers and sellers to interact. As e-commerce continues to grow there is definitely huge potential in bringing supply and demand under one -digital- roof.