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+1

Hi Adrian and Anders

It sounds interesting, and I agree that we see this request relatively often.

What features do you see we would need in the platform to better support scenarios like these? There are different takes on this - one could be that from the frontend it would be possible to create a vendor (which is a shop/warehouse) and let products feed to that shop in a specific format. Maybe with the possibility to manage some thing from the frontend as well, i.e. prices.

PIM does support prices in latest versions, by the way.

BR Nicolai

Hi Nicolai,

It's very good news that PIM now supports Prices. I knew it has been requested and has been planned but I was not aware it was already released. Good work!

Coming back to Marketplace, I am happy that I have finally requested something that seems interesting for somebody else as well :).
And thinking of it, it might be a bit more complicated than just managing products and prices. I have spent some thought on it and I have also looked into how a local online marketplace implemented it.

I see the following steps:

1. Vendor registration - This part can probably be handled with the current UserManagement

2. Definition of taxonomy - Categories, and fields. This part should be done by the Marketplace, not the Vendor but it should be available fr the Vendor as information. We can probably handle it with the current tools we have for Products, Fields, and ProductCategories

3. Catalog management including prices - This part should support importing products (with prices) from a CSV, XML, JSON or API as well as manually defining/editing the products. This part should also include Images and Attachments. We don't have anything ready in the front-end but probably can be handled through the PIM interface

4. Commercial conditions per vendor - Shipping methods accepted, shipping costs, warranties, return policy. This should all be tied to the Vendor. Sometimes the commercial conditions might vary per product type.

4. Grouping together products with the same EAN. I have seen it in our local example that some products might be sold by multiple Vendors. EAN code can be used for grouping them together and we will probably need a standard Product field for "Vendor" that would be connected to a User

5. Orders. Vendors will want to see their part of the orders places through the Marketplace. This means we should probably split an order by Vendor. This is a bit far from what we have but implementing it, might solve another problem with orders having multiple shipments (I have requested it since the days of DW8). Splitting an order into shipments (by Vendor in this case but maybe we can find other use cases) should allow separation of Orders needed for the Marketplace. However, the Payment will be tied to the Parent Order and only the shipping method or charges should be separated.

6. Reports. Vendors should be able to see various reports about their product, how they performed etc.

7. Marketplace admin should be able to unlist products, block vendors etc.

These are just a few thoughts that came to mind when thinking about the functionality. I can check further with our local Marketplace and maybe I can also investigate how our permanent foe (Magento) does it. I will also have a presentation in a few weeks to a prospect that has requested Marketplace functionality. Maybe we can incorporate some of their requests into this list of functionalities.

It would be ideal to have everything happening from the front end, but if we manage to have in the backend first, it would be a step forward anyway.

@Anders: feel free to add your own thoughts to this

Thank you,

Adrian

Hi,

Some loose thoughts also are:

• Create Product discounts from the frontend - Vendors
• List active discounts - Probably achievable through Data Lists nowadays
• New Shipping Provider - from Adrian's point, to take shipping cost per product (rather than per order)

Hi guys,

I have found about 4-5  Magento extensions for MarketPlaces.

I will try to review them and create a high-level list of functionalities.

Then, we can see which ones can already be mapped to existing functionalities and which ones will require additional development/changes.

Thank you,
Adrian

Hi guys,

I have spent a bit more time working with a local Marketplace.

The above points I wrote, together with Nuno's additions are still valid.

One additional thing I have noticed is that Vendors are allocated to specific categories of products that automatically trigger the product fields they should be able to document. And the commercial deal between the Vendor and the Marketplace defines specific commissions for each product category.

One other thing that I have noticed is that each vendor needs to fill in Warranty information for products. And for some products, the warranties can be extended by buying a warranty Add-on. It would be ideal to have standard fields for Warranties in Dynamicweb. Maybe even a way to extend the warranty for a product with Add-ons. BOM products might fit the functionality but the interface for defining the combinations might not be very friendly to use in PIM.

In the meantime, there are a few Dynamicweb features that can help with solving some of the points.

Specifically, I am thinking about multiple carts (9.8) and permissions for Prices (upcoming).

The multiple carts option can, in theory, solve the order split if we allow a cart for each vendor. And, of course, if shipping fees/calculations are allowed per Vendor or per Product. However, I am not sure how scalable this multiple carts feature is. Potentially, we can be talking about hundreds of vendors in a marketplace. Also, we need to be able to checkout all carts at once, in a single "Order Instance".

Normally, the buyer should select a single Payment method and a single Shipping method per Order Instance. This means that some vendors will probably enforce the methods that would apply for their products and also the shipping fees that would apply for their products for each Shipping method.

Do you guys feel that this functionality would be achievable?

How far are we from being able to implement it as a custom code and eventually as a standard functionality?

Thank you,
Adrian

Hi Adrian,

We are supporting Channable to deliver products to marketplaces. 

br

Harry

Hi Harry,

Thank you for the feedback. My post is about projects that would want to use Dynamicweb for building Marketplace projects.

I know about Channable and I think it might be useful in some cases. Still, it's a bit awkward to ask a customer to pay an extra fee for a Channable project after paying several hundred EUR on the PIM license.

Anyway, I am sure in some cases it is useful.

Thank you,

Adrian

Hi Adrian

Right now creating features for using Dynamicweb as a marketplace in the standard product is not on our radar. We will be happy to answer questions on the way if you choose to go down that path.

BR Nicolai

Hi Nicolai,

I totally understand it. This approach should be more of a long term approach if you guys decide it's something worth pursuing.

Thank you,

Adrian