Auckland-based New Zealand online retailer, Onceit has partnered with Mirakl to expand out its third-party marketplace capabilities and bring in more retailers to its platform.
Mirakl is a French cloud-based e-commerce platform provider with a client list that includes Bunnings, Toyota, Siemens, H&M Home, among others.
OnceIt executive director and founder, Jay Goodey, tells RetailBiz, “We initially offered a glorified dropship model to furniture suppliers in New Zealand around three years ago, because we didn’t want to be moving the furniture ourselves. That ended up going very well, and our apparel guys started asking us about the same format.”
Onceit had about 130 sellers on the platform working on a marketplace model when it realised it was starting to get a bit unwieldy, so in 2020 it went on an eight month long search to find a partner, culminating in a deal signed with Mirakl on December 31.
“It was a good way to bring in New Year’s Eve,” Goodey says.
Onceit was founded in 2010 by Goodey, and claims a base of 600,000 loyal members using the site. The plan is to onboard some 200+ Australian sellers over the next 12 months.
Art versus science
The onboard process is handled by an account manager assigned to the seller, who works through the fundamentals, terms, commercials, and then from a practical perspective an onboarding team helps with all the integration.
That includes category mapping and making sure the product information is fit to purpose, Goodey tells Retailbiz.
“From there we work with the seller to have a bit of a launch, the right strategy and approach, and pepper in ways to give the seller exposure. We have the capacity to group and merchandise products in a way that our customers will best receive them.
“It’s art and science. We have a lot of reports and real-time information about what works. But the art side is that things are handpicked, and messages personally written which set how a customer responds.”
There are already 250 suppliers working across its marketplace platform, a lot of which are based in Australia.
“As we roll out the new platform launch there’s a lot more in the pipelines,” says Goodey.
“We’ve had a version of our contract facility for the past eight years. For a lot of suppliers who we used to handle the freight for, the route is a lot more accessible, and they can do that part in house. That means we can work with more people on this platform. With that shipping line becoming more democratised and successful, we feel like we’ll be a fairly logical platform for more Australian suppliers.”