Marketplace Academy
Everything you need to know about marketplaces, and the decisions you have to make before you build your own. One chapter per decision, in the order you have to make them. Written from the implementations and advisory work behind Mercur.
1. Foundations
- 1.1Which Marketplace Platform Model Should You Choose?
- 1.2What Is the Merchant of Record in a Marketplace?
- 1.3What Is Included in a Marketplace Platform, and What Do You Have to Build Yourself?
- 1.4Why Build a Marketplace, and Which Metrics Prove It Worked?
- 1.512 Marketplace Decisions You Have to Make Before Launch
2. Money
Coming soon- 2.1How Money Moves Through a Marketplace
- 2.2When You Need a License to Handle Other People's Money
- 2.3When to Take the Buyer's Money: Authorization and Capture
- 2.4Splitting the Payment and Who Carries the Processing Cost
- 2.5Seller Payouts: Cycles, Holds and Reserves
- 2.6Balances and the Ledger: Why the Number in the Panel Has to Equal the Transfer
- 2.7Reconciling the Money: Platform, Payment Provider, Bank, Accounting
- 2.8Refunds: Who Pays, When and Out of What
- 2.9Commission on a Refunded Order: Who Keeps It and on What Basis
- 2.10Chargebacks and a Seller's Negative Balance
- 2.11Cash on Delivery: Whether to Support It at All
- 2.12Fraud: by the Buyer, by the Seller and in Collusion
- 2.13Seller Verification: KYC, Beneficial Owners, Sanctions
- 2.14Wallets, Store Credit and Gift Cards
3. Tax and invoicing
Coming soon- 3.1Who Accounts for VAT in Your Model
- 3.2When the Platform, Not the Seller, Owes the Tax
- 3.3Who Issues Which Invoice
- 3.4Mandatory E-invoicing and What Changes When You Invoice on a Seller's Behalf
- 3.5Corrections and Periods: Why a Refund from March Cannot Land in May
- 3.6Foreign Sellers, Imports and Customs
- 3.7The Platform's Reporting Obligations
- 3.8Revenue in Your Books: the Commission or the Whole GMV
4. Law and liability
Coming soon- 4.1What You Are in the Eyes of the Law: Intermediary or Seller
- 4.2The Contracts and Terms You Have to Have
- 4.3Consumer Rights: Who Actually Delivers Them
- 4.4Obligations Toward Sellers: Transparency, Ranking, Termination
- 4.5Product Safety and Recalls
- 4.6Price History and Honest Promotions
- 4.7Personal Data: Who Is the Controller, You or the Seller
- 4.8Regulated Categories and Prohibited Products
- 4.9Environmental Fees and Producer Obligations
- 4.10When the Law Changes Mid-flight: How to Add a Required Attribute to a Million Offers
5. Catalog and product data
Coming soon- 5.1A Shared Product Page or a Seller Listing
- 5.2What to Match Offers On, and Where GTIN Stops Working
- 5.3Who Owns the Product Data
- 5.4When Two Sellers Disagree About the Data
- 5.5Categories, Attributes and Variants: How to Build the Tree
- 5.6Description Quality: What You Can Enforce and What You Cannot
- 5.7Duplicates and Merging Products
- 5.8Catalog Rules: Validation Before Publication and After It
- 5.9Approving Products: Manually, Automatically, or Both
- 5.10Catalog Debt: Where It Comes from and Who Cleans It Up
- 5.11Products That Do Not Sell: When and How to Retire Them
- 5.12Translations and a Multilingual Catalog
6. Storefront and buyer experience
Coming soon- 6.1Which Seller Wins: the BuyBox from Scratch
- 6.2How to Show the Buyer They Are Buying from Someone Else
- 6.3A Cart with Several Sellers
- 6.4Checkout When the Cart Holds Several Sellers
- 6.5Delivery and Dates: What You Can Promise and What You Cannot
- 6.6Search and Filtering Across Offers
- 6.7Showing the Price and Keeping Offers Comparable
- 6.8SEO for Pages That Carry Many Offers
7. Sellers
Coming soon- 7.1Where to Find Your First Sellers
- 7.2Registration and Onboarding: from the Form to the First Sale
- 7.3How to Build a Seller Account: Entity, Store, Currency, Users
- 7.4How to Measure Seller Quality and When to Suspend a Seller
- 7.5Reinstatement and the Probation Period
- 7.6Requests from Sellers: Brands, Categories, Exceptions
- 7.7The Seller Panel and Integrators: What a Seller Can Do Alone
- 7.8Seller Support and Education
- 7.9Customers Leaking Off the Platform, and How to Prevent It
- 7.10When a Seller Changes Its Legal Form
- 7.11When a Seller Leaves
8. Orders and logistics
Coming soon- 8.1How You Split an Order Between Sellers
- 8.2Order Statuses and Who Is the Source of Truth for Them
- 8.3Sellers Accepting and Rejecting Orders
- 8.4When an Order Counts as Delivered, and Why That Is a Question About Money
- 8.5Closing an Order: Accounting Finality Against the Right to Return
- 8.6Fulfillment Models: the Seller, You, Dropship, Click and Collect
- 8.7Shipping Setup: Zones, Methods, Classes, Fees
- 8.8Carriers, Labels and Tracking
- 8.9Stock Levels and Selling What You Do Not Have
- 8.10Order Documents
- 8.11Bundles, Sets and Services Attached to a Product
9. After the sale
Coming soon- 9.1Return Policy: the Window, the Costs, the Reasons
- 9.2Complaints: Who Decides, How Fast and on Whose Money
- 9.3Who Talks to the Customer: You or the Seller
- 9.4Reviews and Ratings
- 9.5The Buyer Promise and Who Funds It
- 9.6Warranties, Repairs and Spare Parts
10. Pricing, commissions and promotions
Coming soon- 10.1How to Build a Commission Grid
- 10.2Thresholds, Caps and Negotiated Commissions
- 10.3How to Keep the Rates in the System Matching the Document Your Sellers Signed
- 10.4Who Sets the Price, and Whether You Police Parity
- 10.5Seller Promotions and Operator Campaigns
- 10.6Discount Codes: Who Funds Them and What Happens to the Commission
- 10.7A Loyalty Program Running on Seller Offers
- 10.8Retail Media: Build It, Buy It or Hand It to an Agency
11. Buyers
Coming soon- 11.1Who Your Buyer Is and How Their Path Changes
- 11.2How to Arm Your Own Sales Team with Seller Offers
- 11.3Integrating with Your Customer's Procurement Systems
- 11.4Payment Terms and Credit Risk
- 11.5Contract and Negotiated Prices
- 11.6Changing Buyer Habits: What You Cannot Force
- 11.7Marketing the Marketplace: Announce It Loudly or Quietly
12. Technology and integrations
Coming soon- 12.1What You Have to Integrate, and in What Order
- 12.2Who Is the Source of Truth for Which Object
- 12.3Events, Webhooks and Polling: How Systems Talk to Each Other
- 12.4Idempotency: Why One Order Becomes Three
- 12.5APIs for Sellers and Partners
- 12.6Environments and Moving Configuration Between Them
- 12.7Performance, Availability and Failure Modes
- 12.8Security and Data Isolation Between Sellers
- 12.9Identity: SSO, MFA and Roles
- 12.10Audit: What You Log, Who Sees It and for How Long
- 12.11Transactional Email: Domain, Deliverability, Address Masking
- 12.12Data and Analytics: Why Your BI Does Not Match the Panel
- 12.13Where AI Is Actually Worth Using
13. Organization and launch
Coming soon- 13.1Who Runs the Marketplace Inside Your Company
- 13.2How Many People You Need, and for What
- 13.3Which Departments Will Change and Which Will Push Back
- 13.4The Work Queue: Who Approves What, and Where It Waits
- 13.5Incentives and Credit for the Result: 1P Against 3P, Country Against Group
- 13.6The Daily, Weekly and Monthly Routine
- 13.7Month-end Close and Explaining the Numbers to Sellers
- 13.8People on the Market: Who You Will Hire and Who Will Poach Them
- 13.9The Business Case: What It Costs and When It Pays Back
- 13.10Phasing: a Pilot, or a Start with Real Volume
- 13.11How You Will Know a Phase Worked
- 13.12Migrating from an Existing Platform
- 13.13The Tests You Cannot Skip
- 13.14Launch Readiness: Who Can Block It
- 13.15The First Weeks After Launch
- 13.16Running Cost and Independence
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