Not much more than a month ago, OnBuy announced it was ready to help sellers upload their inventory to the site and available to buyers.
OnBuy is a new marketplace that doesn’t charge selling fees but rather is funded by subscription model: £49 or £89 (ex VAT) a month. We wrote about the launch here. OnBuy operates in the UK, the European Union, the USA and Canada.
And they’re on track to have 2.4 million product lines available to shoppers, despite their relative youth. And their sights are firmly set on taking on Amazon and eBay.
OnBuy MD Cas Paton says: “We are off to a flying start and delighted with the response from sellers in the first two weeks. The feedback has been very, very good – sellers are telling us that they are fed up with paying the high seller fees on Amazon and eBay and welcome a British alternative that puts sellers first.
“We are giving them a credible alternative, working with our sellers and not against them or in competition with them, and helping them to grow.
“Our research tells us that customers and sellers don’t like some aspects of Amazon but so far they feel there has not been a credible alternative. Now there is one. “The question for sellers shouldn’t be ‘why would I sell through OnBuy?’ It’s ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
“There are key benefits to signing up now and not waiting, including getting early exposure and gaining market share. Sellers will be building a relationship with OnBuy and will be directly involved in the huge marketing push.
“The benefits are not just for sellers and customers, but for the economy as a whole. As a British company, OnBuy pays its taxes in the UK and is passionate about supporting the British economy.
“We’re very excited to be at this crucial stage in the development of a marketplace which we believe will shake up online shopping and offer both sellers and shoppers the deals they deserve.”
25 Responses
Is anyone actually selling anything on Onbuy?
Giving them £49 a month is a nice earner for them, but what about sellers?
Are they delivering buyers?
Yikes! Now there’s an optional account management fee, taking the monthly total to £89 per month and the £49 fee now apparently only covers 1,000 items. Contact their team for a quote for more !!!!
Still nobody has registered to sell in our categories on Onbuy, so, as they say on Dragons Den, I won’t be investing, I’m out.
Very much reminiscent of Ebid – at least they only wanted £49 as a one-off fee, not monthly !!!
Rakuten, eBid, CQout, blah blah.
Don’t think so!
Last week OnBuy accidentally sent an email to all there sellers by cc this meant that every sellers email address was exposed and caused an outrage between the sellers of OnBuy’s professionalism.
The sellers have now created a forum as from OnBuys last accounts in 2015, a company who had circa 5k in the bank could hardly complete with marketing of Amazon and eBay.
The other worry of all sellers is nobody has made a sale and the majority of categories remain with no products within them.
From the poor website design to the ill thought emails sent by OnBuy they seem to have a long way to go before attracting sellers.
I will be sticking with OnBuy, but just hope they are a legitimate company and we start seeing some signs of marketing soon.
a British alternative that puts sellers first.
is the strap line that worries us
its buyers we need not sellers
It’s extremely difficult to start a business like this and simply changing the method of income for the marketplace owner and the cost dynamics for a seller doesn’t do anything to get buyers on the site.
Sure it is chicken and egg – need sellers before you get buyers, but these days you need a big marketing budget with some cool ideas.
Rakuten failed and they had a much daisies start migrating customers from play – all done very poorly and no need – play.com is the best name outthere.
I know how I would do it – but I will keep that to myself for now 🙂
So basically the answer is no, then. Nobody can say they’re selling anything on this site.
Perhaps Tamebay should do some checks to make sure they are pukka
If you search the business forums via google you will find references to Onbuy back in 2013.
At that time, the fee was £22 per month with a small % commission.
I think that Onbuy should be prepared to refund any subscribers if this fails to take off.
It’s one thing to be optimistic and intending to change the online market. However, it’s clear that they’ve tried before and, presumably, failed.
When I first spotted the pre-launch on Tamebay I did take a look and I went through the sign up procedure, but left before creating the account.
There was very little information about when I would be expected to pay, which I assumed meant I was to start paying immediately.
I was also concerned about how long I would have to “bank roll” Onbuy, along with other sellers, before customers came calling.
I do not agree that it is a chicken & egg situation, you cannot have buyer until you have items for sale, in this situation you need to offer sellers a free 3-6 month trial incentive or 3 months free & 3 months 50% or sliding scale combination. Once a seller is taking sales, they are likely to stay on-board.
If they are serious about getting customers it is a waste of time without having sellers, customers will think it a joke or a scam site and possibly never come back.
Without sellers, you have nothing!
As a buyer I struggled to find any category with something in it (so I’m only likely to return to the site as a result of reading updates about it on Tamebay!)
I would therefore agree with the sellers who suggest that getting inventory on to the site should be the top priority.
this has a funny flavour to it,and we just dont see it working
We signed up with OnBuy from day one and have so far made four sales, which is four more than we ever did with eBid.
Seller support has been excellent, and they take on board suggestions that we have put forward, so we aim is to stick with OnBuy because our experience has been positive and has shown us that they actually respect us as sellers.
Remember that they have always made it very clear from the onset that they would not be pushing the site with on-line and TV advertising until February 2017.
No, four sales since the recent relaunch last month. We are trying to tell you need to speculate to accumulate – Suck it and see.
We just got the email the other day too.
Sadly the only thing we stand to gain for our £49 per month is first mover advantage, but that only lasts so long.
I actually prefer a commission based model, as it incentivises both parties (seller and Marketplace) to ‘sing for their supper’. As it stands now, its a one-way gamble that OnBuy are going to invest that £49 in a way that I stand to benefit.
As it stands £49 in my category is what Amazon receive in commission on £326 of sales. I don’t see £326 of sales coming from a new marketplace in a rush so unless they are willing to put their money where their mouth is – and say “we’re confident enough that we will drive buyers to your products so let’s say that you won’t pay any subscription fees unless you sell £X amount in a month” – then I can’t see us investing the time integrating with them.