The marketplace is where businesses on the app buy from each other at wholesale: product brands, distributors carrying other brands' lines, and services such as a lab, a 3PL or a designer. Each listing says the industries it sells into. A brand can show its wholesale prices to every business, or only to the businesses it approves: then you apply once, and once approved you see your prices and order from its page. Open it from Inventory, Purchasing, Marketplace.
Finding what to buy
- Under Find, type what you are looking for: a brand, a product, a category or an item number. A listing shows the products that matched.
- Narrow it with the filters: the industry, the category, products or services, the state it ships from, its order minimum and how soon it ships. Sells to … businesses keeps only the listings that sell to your kind of business.
- With nothing typed, Featured, Brands You Buy From and New on the Marketplace come first, then every listing.
Each card says where you stand: Wholesale pricing after approval, Applied: waiting for the brand, Approved to buy, or nothing at all when the brand shows its prices to everyone.
Applying to a brand
- Open the brand. Its page says what it asks for before it shows its prices: the kinds of business it sells to, a resale certificate or tax id, a business license, its order minimum.
- Choose Apply to buy. Say your kind of business and who the brand should reach, and add what it asks for: your tax id with its state, and a photo or a PDF of your license (only the brand's team sees it).
- Choose Send the application. Some brands approve at once whoever shows what they ask; the rest decide, and you are told by email. Until then you see the suggested retail prices if the brand shows them, never its wholesale ones.
A brand that declines says why on its page, and you can Apply again. Applications lists every brand you applied to and the quotes you asked for.
Ordering
- On the brand's page, choose how many of each product. A product sold by the case is ordered in cases, and some have a least order ("At least 2 cases"); the cart at the foot of the page says what is still short, and the brand's minimum.
- Choose Review the cart, check where it ships, add a note, and Place the order. Your prices are the ones the brand approved you on: its price list for you, or its listing's prices.
- The brand becomes one of your vendors and its products your parts, and the order is an ordinary purchase order to receive under Purchasing. Nothing is charged here: the brand bills you on your terms, shown on the order with the day it is due once it ships.
My orders lists what you ordered and where each stands. Order again fills that brand's cart with the same products at today's prices; anything it no longer sells is left out and named. In a cart, Save as a shelf keeps it by a name (Monthly backbar); Shelves and the brand's page fill the cart from one in a tap.
Asking for a quote
A services listing takes requests for a quote instead of orders. Choose Ask for a quote, on the listing or beside one of its services, say what you need and who to reach, and Send the request. It reaches them by email and in the app.
Listing your own line
- In the marketplace, choose Set up my brand. My brand then holds your listing.
- On its Brand page, give its name, its story and where orders are emailed; say whether it sells products or services, the Industries it sells into, where it ships from and how many days it takes. Add its products under Products, each with its wholesale price, its case pack, its least order and its lead time.
- Under Who sees your wholesale prices, choose Every business or Only businesses I approve, and what a business shows to apply: a resale certificate or tax id, a business license, the kinds of business you sell to. Switch on Approve at once whoever shows all of this to let them in without waiting for you.
- List it in the marketplace. When the platform looks listings over, it waits until it is approved; one sent back shows the platform's note on its Brand page.
Deciding who buys
Buyers lists the businesses that applied, waiting first. Decide opens one: its kind of business, who to reach, its tax id and license, and what it wrote. Approve it on Their prices (the listing's, one of your price lists, or one of your wholesale accounts' prices), Their terms and, with the sales CRM on, Their rep, with a note they see; or Decline it with a note. Open one approved later to change its prices, terms or rep, or to stop selling to it.
With the sales CRM on, a business that applies or asks for a quote is a prospect, from the marketplace; approved, it is an account with its rep, or the owner of the territory it is placed in. See The sales CRM.
Orders come in under Orders, to accept and ship as before. Reports shows the last twelve months: orders and what they came to by month, your top buyers and products, and who is approved or waiting.
Distributors and catalogs
A distributor lists the lines it carries. On the Brand page, switch on We distribute other brands' lines: each listing can then name Whose line it is, tied to that brand when it is on the marketplace too, and buyers see it distributed by you. You keep up to 200 listings.
To bring a catalog in from your own system, choose Bring in a catalog under Products and pick a CSV or Excel file. Its columns are matched by their headings (change any that is wrong); the first rows show as they will come in, and a row that cannot (no wholesale price, say) is named with why. With a Brand column, a distributor's rows go to a listing for each brand, made as a draft when there is none. A row whose item number is on the listing already changes that product.
Best practices
- Say every industry you sell into. Buyers filter by industry and by their own kind of business; a listing in none of theirs is found only by its name.
- Ask for what you would check anyway. A tax id and a license let you approve with confidence; with Approve at once whoever shows all of this on, a business that shows them is buying the same day.
- Put buyers on a price list rather than editing prices for one. Make the list under Products, Wholesale, and approve each business on it; change the list and every buyer on it follows.
- Set least orders and case packs on the products, not in a note: the cart enforces them before the order reaches you.
- Keep a shelf for what you buy every month, and fill the cart from it rather than starting from the catalog each time.
- Bring a distributor's catalog in again whenever prices change. Rows are matched by item number, so the products change in place and orders already placed keep the prices they were placed at.