OnBuy had a record-breaking Black Friday. As a result of OnBuy’s price drop on every single product across the marketplace, sales totalled nearly £2.5 million on one day alone. As a reference point, that’s 250% up on last year so they are maintaining their stellar growth.
The price drop was achieved by the marketplace’s unique offering of reducing its fees for sellers over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales period. This initiative allowed buyers to enjoy discounted product prices without the sellers’ profit margins being impacted – a disruptive move not seen in other online marketplaces.
Let’s be very honest here – £2.5 million is a drop in the ocean compared to the turnover larger more established marketplaces will have seen, but and this is a big but, in the 14 years of writing for Tamebay OnBuy are the ONLY start up marketplace to achieve anywhere close to a million pound sale day… and that was last year. This year’s £2.5 million sales in a single day is an amazing achievement and OnBuy have hardly started – their expansion plans for 2021 should keep them on track for even greater success next year. It’s also worth pointing out that the traffic to the OnBuy marketplace is now on a par with the much longer established, highly respected and universally acknowledged success story that is Notonthehighstreet. OnBuy is now too big and growing too fast to ignore.
OnBuy are also doing things differently – every seller on OnBuy was included in their site wide Black Friday and Cyber Monday price crash as it was funded by OnBuy marketing. Yes OnBuy sellers were encouraged to offer their best prices over the sales period but if you couldn’t afford to offer a discount OnBuy had your back and sacrificed their fees to fund a discount for you which helped fuel their record-breaking Black Friday.
“We’re more than a marketplace – in a market dominated by behemoth retailers, we provide an opportunity for independent retailers of all sizes to succeed. We chose to discount our seller fees for Black Friday to show our sellers just how committed we are to driving their success. Unlike other platforms, where sellers are pushed to lower their prices, we cut our fees to offer over £50 million in savings – meaning we take the financial hit instead of the independent retailers who need every bit of profit they can get, especially this year.
We’re a rapidly growing business going from strength to strength and we want to use that success to simultaneously fuel growth for our sellers. For too long, big brands have monopolised the Black Friday space and independent retailers have missed out on the opportunity to make sales. Simply put, independents aren’t in the position to offer the big price drops which attract consumers, which allows the big operators to squeeze them out of the picture.
OnBuy is challenging the status quo, which is why we’ve put our hands in our own pockets to help our sellers benefit hugely from the Black Friday sales surge.”
– Cas Paton, founder and CEO, OnBuy
Seller reactions to OnBuy record-breaking Black Friday
“We saw an amazing 500% lift in sales on OnBuy during Black Friday. This is thanks to the fee discount given to help us drive down our price and the additional marketing campaigns they provided to drive customers to the site.
OnBuy’s support during Black Friday has been unmatched by any other marketplace platform we work with and we greatly appreciate their refreshingly seller-focused attitude.”
– Georgina Pursch, business development manager, Paperback Shop
“OnBuy have shown some great out-of-the-box marketing which has resulted in sales increasing YoY during the cyber weeks. They have not only supported sellers by reducing fees during cyber week, but they pass on the savings to customers. OnBuy isn’t a normal marketplace, they’re more of a long-term partner in business.”
– Moheeb Khan, sales and digital marketing manager, MH Star UK Ltd
“Our seller base increased by 10% every month over the last three consecutive months, beating our own predictions for growth. With Christmas around the corner, we were expecting the trend to slow as retailers are busy preparing for the festive season. However, the opposite has happened – we secured 600 new retailers in November alone.
The second lockdown was of course a huge concern for retailers and with them being forced to physically shut up shop, it’s no surprise that so many quickly turned to online platforms like OnBuy. ecommerce has accelerated massively as a result of the pandemic and I don’t foresee that growth slowing anytime soon.”
– Cas Paton, founder and CEO, OnBuy
This Black Friday success for OnBuy and its retailers comes shortly after the marketplace was awarded Ecommerce Company of the Year in the 2020 UK Tech Business Awards. OnBuy has quadrupled its workforce to over 60 full-time staff members this year alone, and has just announced plans to expand its offices into Manchester in the new year, creating at least another 100 jobs over the next two years to support its global expansion into over 140 countries by 2023.
