webinars5-types-of-ecommerce-marketplace-businesses-chapter-3 President and CEO of Clarity Ventures Chris Reddick and Vice-President of Sales and Marketing Ron Halversen discuss the significant differences when it comes to online auction marketplaces. Part 3 of a 4-part series (Return to Part 2) RON: Let's move on to the next one, which is online auctions. This is a great one, right? Because this one can be super complex. We're building a really big one right now, but we've designed some really big real estate auctions that have added some very unique and interesting concepts. So one of the things—and I'll just mention two or three and then I'll hand it over to you—are the different auction types that you could have. I'm doing another white paper right now on auction types. And I was surprised how many different types of auctions there can be: silent auctions and sealed auctions and reverse auctions. There's just all kinds of crazy different auctions, right? Then you've got this whole concept of consignment. And then with consignment, you've got different percentages of commissions and how to pay in track. So they can be really complex. So why don't you dive in a little bit to the auction marketplaces and let's talk about that. CHRIS: Yeah. So this, of course, is going to include some of the standards scenarios like an eBay. And we certainly want to point out the sheer magnitude of that site in and of itself, it is a massive, massive site with a lot of market share. And just in general, though, the concept is going to be that, for a lot of clients spinning up an auction platform, there's probably some niche aspect to it that's really specific that's going to be driving your specific value in the market. CHRIS: And that's really what we want to focus on here with the auctions is, what types of auctions are you going to be running? What is the governance? And like you talked about, Ron, with the real estate scenario, with the auctions for cars—we've done some really interesting things with car auction sites—as well as overall lots and being able to purchase lots, this kind of thing. It has to be easy for the seller to list their items with online auction software. A constant that you'll hear, that a lot of people don't necessarily talk about in the background, is governance. Having sort of training wheels for both the seller and the buyer. And whenever you're dealing with auctions, especially if it's high-value auctions, but even for smaller auctions, it's really important that expectations are managed on all sides and that both the buyer and the seller know what to expect throughout that process. For some, this can be a really high purchase amount, so they're going to need to qualify and go through that process. Whenever they actually go to purchase on an eCommerce auction, they need to be able to properly fulfill the purchase, and then the person delivering the item or handing it over or transferring ownership needs to go through that process properly and there may need to be escrow, etc. So those are some of the common scenarios. Continue to Part 3 to find out more about multi-branded stores.
President and CEO of Clarity Ventures Chris Reddick and Vice-President of Sales and Marketing Ron Halversen discuss the significant differences when it comes to online auction marketplaces. Part 3 of a 4-part series (Return to Part 2)