ChannelAdvisor is to shut down it’s eBay only management tool, MarketplaceAdvisor, blocking new listings from mid July and switching the servers off in September.
The service was acquired in 2007 as MarketWorks, formerly known as AuctionWorks and then rebranded MarketplaceAdvisor. As a single channel solution it’s not surprising it’s being discontinued as ChannelAdvisor’s CEO Scot Wingo is on the record for berating eBay’s slower than the ecommerce average growth rates and believes merchants should be embracing Amazon. ChannelAdvisor has always been focused on helping larger retailers sell across a number of channels.
In their announcement ChannelAdvisor say that they “Continuously evaluate how and where we focus our internal resources to help you grow your business. Occasionally this means we must discontinue support for certain products or services. It is in this spirit that we have made the difficult decision to discontinue our Marketworks/MarketplaceAdvisor Standard product on September 14, 2015“.
Users of MarketplaceAdvisor are likely to be ChannelAdvisor’s smallest retail merchants, the question is will they find a home with the main ChannelAdvisor product or will the be migrating to alternatives? Whilst cost will be one issue, the full blown ChannelAdvisor offering would give merchants the ability to expand across multiple platforms such as Amazon and Rakuten, overseas marketplaces such as TMall and TradeMe, not to mention shopping comparison sites and paid search engines.
ChannelAdvisor told customers “We want to help you navigate this transition so it can be as smooth as possible. We have recommendations for you including our Marketplaces solution. Please email [email protected] with “MarketplaceAdvisor Migration” in the subject line to find out which solution is right for you”.
Of course if merchants had found ChannelAdvisor an attractive offering one wonders why they would still be using MarketplaceAdvisor and hadn’t already migrated to ChannelAdvisor, doubtless other multichannel management providers are already circling ready to offer alternative homes to merchants looking for a low cost solution.
In reality though there can’t be that many single channel eBay only merchants out there so the chances are they were already using other solutions for the off-eBay parts of their businesses anyway. Most AuctionWorks/MarketWorks customers that we knew back in 2007 have already migrated to ChannelAdvisor many years ago.
MarketplaceAdvisor Transition Timeline:
Cessation of new listings and relisting: 15/7/2015
Cessation of monthly billing: 1/8/2015
Cessation of order importing: 17/8/2015
Disablement of storefronts: 17/8/2015
Access to data discontinued, transition complete: 14/9/2015
One Response
Its sad news for so many business owners and marketing executives. But we can expect new things from them.
~Smith