Seven UK Online Marketplaces you need to discover

Selling your products via an online seller gives you a huge opportunity to reach a far wider audience.
Individual ecommerce websites are powerhouses in their own right, but when combined with what larger-scale online marketplaces can offer, your business can make use of huge new potential.
Many businesses are put off by online sellers because of the competition. With everyone and their grandmas opening Etsy stores, Amazon pages, and even Not On The High Street storefronts, it may seem like the kind of uphill struggle you don’t want to engage in. But these are not the only marketplaces out there. There are marketplaces for niche specialists, broader generalists, and every flavour in between. To help you see whats out there, here’s seven examples of great UK based.
GAME Marketplace
As a name and staple of the British retail scene, GAME has been around since 1992. What is less well known is that its website is not only where first-party sales happen. It also offers a thriving marketplace service.
With over 250 sellers and 12,000 orders processed per month, GAME goes far beyond the used electronics and video game marketplace. In addition to computer components, customised console extras, and other gaming accessories, GAME is an ideal place for specialised apparel. These items are aimed at what was once thought of as the niche ‘nerd’ sector of the market but is now more mainstream than ever.
GAME boasts 4 million active users and sees sales commissions ranging from 6%-15% depending on a range of circumstances. This UK focused online seller is potentially well worth your time.
Folksy
For anyone selling homemade or artisanally crafted items, Folksy makes an excellent addition to Etsy, Amazon, or Not On The High Street.
As well as over 350,000 visitors per month and low sales commission rates of 6%, Folksy has recently adopted a new feature that allows even more localised shopping options. Customers are now able to select their customer options by region, allowing Cornish ceramics or Northumbrian needlepoint to be found by local customers far more easily.
Folksy offers two account options for sellers a pay-as-you-go Basic arrangement, better suited to sellers with smaller quantities of stock, or Folksy ‘Plus’ which is ideal frequent sellers and those with wider inventory range.
Fruugo
If you are a British based online seller looking to move into international marketplaces more easily, Fruugo could be the place to go. Not only does Fruugo customer base reach into 23 countries around the world, it also automatically translates product listings into 11 different languages.
A broad-ranging marketplace, Fruugo is a generalist online seller covering everything from apparel to consumer electronics, cosmetics, kitchenware, and gardening tools.
There are no ongoing monthly fees or fees for listing items. However, the commission rate is higher than some at 15%, and there is also a 2.53% payment processing fee. This may be worth it for some businesses though, given that Fruugo boasts an active user base of over 25 million customers.
OnBuy
Despite being very new on the scene, going live as recently as 2016, OnBuy has become a major success. Between March 2018 and March 2019 OnBuy reported a 1,300% increase in sales across the site.
OnBuy provides immediate payments (releasing Paypal funds upon despatch rather than slower systems organised by many other Paypal users), risk-free subscription plans where monthly fees of between £19-£39 get waived if a seller makes less than £500 per month, and additional promotion through Google shopping, Bing, and other seller networks.
OnBuy also offers competitive commission rates of between 5 and 9%. A reasonable price to access a seller base of over six million users, making it an excellent option for UK-based sellers.
Yumbles
Competing against strong supermarkets and local shops is a challenge faced by many online food-based retailers. Despite these challenging competitors, Yumbles has made a strong name for itself in the UK online marketplace.
Appealing to everyone from vegans, foodies, and microbrewery enthusiasts, Yumbles offers a place for food and drink producers of all kinds to sell their products collectively. With a commission fee of 18% + 30p, and monthly fees on top of that ranging from £6 to £20, Yumbles is one of the more expensive platforms out there.
However, online food-based marketplaces are rare, and Yumbles seems to be doing remarkably well. In July 2018, it was ranked as the 7th largest UK online seller by traffic, which had sites like Amazon, eBay, and Gumtree strongly hogging the top spots. For a niche sector seller to do that well makes Yumbles worth a go for food based sellers.
EBuyGumm
Given that online selling platforms often feature amusing or absurd names, it was only a matter of time before someone used this particular British turn of phrase into a shop name. However, EBuyGumm is determined to make itself noteworthy for far more than just a whimsical name.
To attract as many new sellers as possible, EBuyGumm proudly advertises that sellers of all levels, be they standard, premium, or business, are not charged any fees. That’s no fees for listing and no fees for selling, although the site’s FAQ does confirm that premium and business accounts will not always be this way. The only charge is a 3.2% processing fee for using its propitiatory payment gateway ‘TrustePay’. A system that only releases payments upon confirmation of delivery.
A site very much in its earliest days, EBuyGumm is a generalist seller, offering everything from t-shirts, commemorative kitchen ornaments, and 4x4s. Despite its relative newness, EBuyGumm is definitely worth a look.
Streetshirts
Not all online retail platforms require their sellers to have material goods to hand. Thanks to modern printing equipment, sometimes all a seller needs is good design.
Facilitating the sale of wide varieties of artistic apparel, StreetShirts has been providing a print-on-demand service since 2002. Their white-label option lets your business receives 100% of the advertising potential from packaging to swing labels, inserts, and removable tags.
Integrating cleanly into everything from Shopify to WooCommerce and Big Commerce, Streetshirts cater to a huge potential audience. A perfect option for sellers looking to enter the fashion sector without access to the resources to do this from a warehouse of their own.
Whatever you are planning to sell, OrderWise can make easy work of your online sales. Talk to us to learn more about how our ecommerce platforms can integrate seamlessly with all these online channels, and many more besides.