B2B Wholesale Marketplaces - Stats from A Vendor

UPDATED 8/2/23

You think you're confused? We're all confused. It seems a few times a week my customers ask me if they should be buying our fair trade jewelry on this site or another. Or should they order direct at www.dunitz.com? They want to know how all these sites differ. Since I am not a buyer, I can't share with you how these sites operate from a buyer's perspective. I can share with you how they vary from a vendor's.

FAIRE is the market leader when it comes to B2B gift buying. Their site is the most sophisticated and their fees are the largest for vendors.  An opening order comes with a commission of 15% plus $10.00. Reorder commissions are 15%. Dunitz is on FAIRE. 

Technically FAIRE is the vendor. They collect money. And they pay us on the terms we agree upon with them.  FAIRE collects all resale tax information from buyers.

We choose to have all FAIRE orders paid out on Net 30. The other options for vendors is to be paid in 2 or 3 days or 60 days. Depending on a vendor’s choice, vendors pay a processing fee which is approximately 3%. If you can prove a relationship with a store (in the form of an invoice during the previous two years, or email communication, or registration on your back-end) FAIRE will remove the commission fee. Processing fees are collected on all orders. One way to expedite this process is to upload your entire customer list to the FAIRE system. FAIRE says they don't use our lists for any reason other than to help prove prior relationships.

Vendors can purchase mailing labels for orders through FAIRE. In this case the vendor assumes the risk of loss since boxes will not be insured. At this time (1/1/23), FAIRE reimburses vendors for pre-paid labels. This is always our choice because we insure all of our wholesale orders.

 

ABOUND As of 6/2023, this venue has been closed down for traditional wholesale orders.  

MSA Marketplace As of 1/1/23, this venue has been closed down.

FTF Marketplace As of 1/1/23, this venue has been closed down.

Juniper  As of 1/1/23, Juniper (operated by International Market Centers) has redefined their B2B site to only support vendors that physically participate in their trade shows. We had signed up for their B2B site early in 2022 and went through a laborious on-boarding process. We were told that IMC exhibitor rates were half that of non-exhibitors. We were OK with that, given that more business is more business. We garnered no business from their portal and at the end of the year asked to be removed as an active account. We learned today 1/5/23 that IMC sent an announcement out that their site would only accommodate their trade show exhibitors going forward.  Clearly if the site had been generating revenue and activity, this is not a decision they would have made.

 

Tundra -  As of July 2023, Tundra has also closed down.

DUNITZ & COMPANY is our proprietary site we built so you can work with us directly. It is the easiest for us to manage. We can offer more options on our own site.  Managing all of the others is a bit cumbersome. Want to order a bunch of Starry Night earrings for your store? On our site you can.  On the other sites, we can only make "assortments" available. Managing special orders and back-orders is easily done when working direct. With restrictions on other sites, it is more difficult. We also have some items we offer with lower margins. Our Judaica Collection is an example. We can't afford to list these designs on FAIRE and pay high commission. We've also learned that with FAIRE, they expect orders to ship almost as quickly as they are received. We need to limit what we offer on these sites to the items we stock deep and can ship super quickly.

 

Do I think everyone, everywhere is creating a B2B buying website to snag a piece of the pie? Yes. At the end of they day, I'm thrilled to obtain new business where-ever it comes from.  It's like that old story of which credit card I prefer. Visa or Amex? Truth is it's all good. I like it all. I'm not going to eliminate one because they charge me a larger fee. Are some of these B2B sites easier to use than others? Yes. Might I prefer one over another? Yes. Am I happy to have business come in from any of them? Yes. The bottom line is no matter where you shop, I appreciate you shopping Dunitz & Company's fair trade jewelry.

Please share with me your experiences with these sites. I'd love to hear from you. And thank you for being our customer. -ND