Since they launched in November 2016, there has been massive OnBuy growth, record results in 2019 and OnBuy entered 2020 with over 21m products, over 3k sellers and millions of buyers. In 2019, they saw 5x growth compared to 2018, saw over £1,000,000 in orders for their sellers on Black Friday and had their biggest Christmas yet, so it’s safe to say that 2019 was a fantastic year for OnBuy.
But OnBuy still have plenty of room to grow and they’ve revealed some of their plans for 2020 and have already revealed that they are in their strongest position ever, with a venture capital firm committed to investing in the development of OnBuy. This partnership will enable the marketplace to double their workforce, focus on major marketing activity and optimise our business from top to bottom, including:
- Expanding the team and widening experience in key areas
- Driving huge marketing opportunities
- Increasing development of new solutions, integrations and features
- Major investment in brand awareness
- Introducing stronger social engagement and visibility
Want to work for OnBuy?
If you are a marketplace specialist and looking for a new opportunity, it might be worth having a conversation with OnBuy if you’d like to bring your expertise to the party.
OnBuy growth opportunities for sellers
In 2020, OnBuy are forecasting another 5x growth and targeting a sales increase of over £100m this year (and over 100x growth in four years!). That said, even with 21m products on OnBuy they know that they still don’t have it all covered! There are huge pricing opportunities where OnBuy isn’t competitive with other online marketplaces and there are still gaps in their product range. They know that these gaps are narrowing, but this also makes it a great time for retailers to join and benefit from OnBuy growth.
We’ve heard complaints that some products on OnBuy aren’t competitively priced but this is really an opportunity for sellers to take advantage. All marketplaces suffer from gaps in inventory or uncompetitive offers and they all take steps to fill these inventory gaps but what they’d rather have is sellers with great offers that they can market to consumers. If you see competitors on OnBuy with offers you know you could beat, this is the opportunity for you to step in and start winning.
“Gaps in our catalogue with missing products and uncompetitive pricing are far from a negative for online retailers: this is a great opportunity to make the most of the reduced competition. We’re attracting hundreds of retailers per month to OnBuy and these categories are filling up quickly, so the opportunity to benefit is immediate and we invite retailers to start selling on OnBuy as soon as possible.”
– OnBuy
2020 to see OnBuy growth overseas
With an increasing visitor base from overseas in huge markets (including the USA, Australia, France, UAE, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and more), OnBuy is going to launch 22 new online trading locations by year-end 2020 – and a combined 140 new locations by the end of 2023!
This will create a much better shopping experience for customers in these countries and open OnBuy up to a range of new local marketing opportunities, allowing for rapid local expansion. All of OnBuy sellers will have access to all of OnBuy’s markets and they aim to make the process of selling internationally very simple.
OnBuy will also offer optional auto-translation and auto-currency conversion, but give sellers control in overriding the settings for each country because they want OnBuy to work for you as a viable and efficient online international selling channel.
OnBuy Seller Proposition
OnBuy growth is looking strong for 2020, with plenty of developments and investment to come. Their proposition for sellers includes:
Competitive Selling Fees
Ranging between 5-9%, our fees mean you can price lower and attract more buyers without eating into your margins.
Get Paid Immediately
You’re paid immediately by PayPal. All payments are processed through PayPal, so not only do we never touch your money, but you’re paid immediately on item dispatch.
Risk-Free Selling
Selling with us is risk-free! If you make less than £500 in sales in a month, you’ll get our Sales Guarantee, which means we’ll waive the next month’s Standard subscription fee.
PayPal Seller Protection
You can sell with complete peace of mind knowing that eligible orders are covered by the PayPal Seller Protection scheme.
We Don’t Compete With Sellers
And we never will! We’re a marketplace, not a retailer, so we focus our efforts on making sales for our sellers.
Dedicated UK-Based Support Team
We have a dedicated UK-based team ready to help you sign up, onboard you and ensure you’re making the most of OnBuy.
If you’d like to start selling on OnBuy you can sign up here.
13 Responses
I would definitely like to start selling on Onbuy but they don’t want collectables. Despite repeated pleas for proper categorisation they simply haven’t listened. As well as pointing out the huge market for collectables, there is huge dissatisfaction with Ebay in these catagories. So, whilst wishing them well, I won’t be moving my 100,000+ items onto Onbuy. It’s a pity, but I’m not going to waste any more time flagging it up to them.
They used stripe for payments but have now gone with paypal which looked great till Paypal decided to start keeping all transaction fees from march so we will be looking at whether that’s a good or bad thing.
We have had very good results with onbuy so far, yes no where near ebay, but we never expected that at this stage. However the big thing for me is a lack of a mobile app or any talk of one coming. With so much now done via mobiles it just makes sense. However i appreciate it isn’t a simple thing to make it work for both sellers and buyers… just look at the nightmare ebay app if you are a seller!
Thankfully atleast the normal browser site for onbuy works ok…
not much is expected from on buy, so low sales seem quite a success,
if it were ebay that success would be deemed failure ,
we would rather pay more to sell more, not kid ourselves about a few % less fees,
lower fees would only really be cost effective with quantity of sales
Regards
Your comments on the paypal fees it is not fees that are an issue it is the associated costs.
If a person buys an item we always know we lose the fixed 30p even if they return the item . However from March Paypal will be keeping all fees..
So if a buyer purchases a £100 item and then 2 minutes later before we have even packed it says please cancel.
We lose the whole lot 3% and 30p.
So hoping that sellers can offer the items they sell on eBay a bit cheaper on the On Buy platform will not be possible as any item that needs to fit such as clothes or collars etc have a pretty big return rate, plus rivals can just sink you without even parting with money by purchasing then cancelling.
Where as eBay are introducing their own system for payments which will not be incurring these charges so your platform will become more expensive.
@onBuy
“…if you don’t get £500 in sales you don’t pay a monthly fee (£19) so you get the chance to get listed and grow with us…”
I don’t follow the logic sorry. First off I would be concerned for my business selling on your platform if your amazing GMV (per your quote) does not even gives us £500 of sales in a MONTH. I think this argument is valid and attractive for tiny sellers starting out(?). Second thing, “chance to get listed and grow” – it would be my last wish to list, and list, and list new products on your platform, then having very little sales (zero?) and call it a “grow”. It’s waste of time in my books. Good luck anyway.
Any luck integrating with Volo?