Florist Marketplace, yes or no?

Lately a new form of flower’s commercialization had been implemented; is akin to eBay or Etsy service does. This marketplace is supposed to be an internet platform that allows a local florist to upload his products, local zip codes of delivery coverage; setup his own prices, even, the florist can create a storefront on this market place. 

On the process, the customer arrives to this web marketplace; there he buys flowers that will be fulfilled by his chosen florist. The marketplace gain between 10% and 20% for administration, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and transaction fees on every order; the rest of the money goes to the fulfilling florist. This model is very good for the Filling Florist, but at the same time this service is comparable to an Order Gather (OG) service with the difference that the Filling Florist roll is very active here, rather filling florist profits are very attractive; but, on other hand, the clients that should go directly to the Filling Florist website are getting attracted to the Marketplace website.

Some of the percentage of the money made by the Marketplace in each transaction is designated to a Search Engine Optimization leaving the Filling Florist website hooked in some sort of disadvantage when a customer performs a search in any web search engine; so when a potential customer wants a floral arrangement from a  florist on the area, guess what?... the customer will end on the marketplace, the new middle man, The Florist Marketplace.

As time passes the website of the Florist will fade off from search engines or have to compete very hard against the marketplace trying the get relevant positions on the search results.

“When you feed your product descriptions to marketplaces you give them the ability to use that content. If your product feed contains the same descriptions that are on your site, the marketplace could receive primary credit, and search engines could label you as a copycat.”

In a long run the Florist will lose the branding benefit of selling to the customer directly; the florist website fades off in favor of a new middleman, called Marketplace.  The main advise for florist is to maximize revenue growth on the web store and develop a long-term strategy for it before making marketplace selling a priority; marketplace should be a secondary resource of revenue not the main one.

Many times  Order Gathers and freelancer floral designer join the marketplace services only using the incorporation information (or not at all), but not necessarily having a brick and mortar presence.

Winners:

• Anyone who is willing to make and sell flower arrangements. Easy setup, my high school neighbor can sell flowers from her parent’s garage.
• Order gathers, can gather order from market place.
• Supermarkets who sell flowers to anyone willing to make and sell flower arrangements.
• Market Place, who is the middleman who take profits on each transaction.

Losers:

Brick and mortar florist, who has to compete against order gathers, and freelancer designers like my neighbor aforementioned before. Also in the long run, they have to compete against market places on search results positions on Google. 

Direct2florist marketplace and Bloomnation marketplace are some examples of Florists marketplaces.

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