How To Set Up An International Fashion Online Marketplace

Overcoming the pandemic lull, the global fashion market is thriving. Valued at $1.5 trillion in 2021, the fashion industry is expected to be approximately $2 trillion by 2026. An interesting point to note here is that despite the slump during the COVID waves, ecommerce helped apparel retailers and D2C brands stay afloat and bounce back to pre-pandemic sales levels as soon as restrictions were lifted. 

Going online has not only helped brands in domestic markets but has also opened up the global fashion markets for them. Every fashion brand worth its salt has plans to go global sooner or later.  And what better way to do it than getting started with an international fashion online marketplace.

Why fashion brands should set up a global marketplace website

Before we look into the benefits of setting up an online marketplace for clothing and accessories, let us check some stats and facts on fashion ecommerce. Here they are:

• $700 billion was the worth of global fashion e-commerce market in 2021 

• $1.2 trillion is the expected revenue from global fashion e-commerce by 2025

• $600 billion is the projected revenue from online fashion industry in Asia by 2025, 

• $228.4 billion is the fashion e-commerce revenue in North America

• 39% of total apparel sales in Europe comes through ecommerce

• Over 67% of the global consumers have made a cross-border purchase

• 22% of online sales come through cross border ecommerce in 2022, up from 15% in 2026

Source: Statista

The figures strongly suggest the stupendous growth opportunities that the global fashion markets have to offer. When you expand your online marketplace to global markets, you get access to an untapped audience segment creating brand visibility and generating increased revenue.

Grasp this fantastic opportunity to grow your business because of the following reasons: 

• Boom in the internet usage and ecommerce has made the customers shift to marketplace websites

• Customers are now buying clothes more frequently than ever

• Convenience is still the top most priority of customers, and so they prefer to shop online

• The costs of running a brick and mortar stores does not always allow the brands to offer as attractive deals as they offer on their online stores

• An online store brings in more potential customers with enhanced credibility and trustworthiness

• As more and more millennials join the e commerce industry, you can take advantage of reaching a larger audience

• The fashion ecommerce store has lower maintenance costs than a brick and mortar store, hence your profit margin increases

It is just the right time to realign your business and start building your fashion marketplace website and adapt to the uncharted climate.

How to set up your international fashion online marketplace

“You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it." - Edith Head 

As we have established the importance of starting an online fashion marketplace, it’s time we talk about the steps involved. First and foremost you need an online marketplace solution provider that is futuristic and helps you scale your business. StoreHippo is one such new age ecommerce platform that offers comprehensive marketplace solutions and provides you with everything you need to build, run, and grow your fashion business in international markets.  

So let check how to get started with building your marketplace website and start selling in the global markets quickly:

1. Onboard global retail fashion vendors

Once you have built your multi seller website using the best marketplace builder StoreHippo, it is time to start onboarding your vendors. Afterall, it's the vendors who bring in a vast catalog and help your fashion business attract more buyers. Since you are expanding your marketplace to the global borders, do take into consideration the retail vendors from cross borders who might be interested in selling on your marketplace website.

Onboarding the best international fashion vendors on your marketplace website makes your brand popular. With StoreHippo, you can onboard vendors in a few easy steps and help them start selling without the need of much technical know-how. The separate vendor dashboard feature and the unique vendor account gives your  vendor a sense of ownership and easy understanding of their inventory and order status. 

2. Create unique compelling themes

Before you sell a product, you need to sell your marketplace website to your audience. And for that you need to create a storefront that is just WOW. By building unique, responsive and engaging design themes, you can create a conversion oriented multi seller website that has the potential to become your buyers’ favourite. 

StoreHippo, the best ecommerce solution provider comes with customizable themes that help you design a unique look for your store. You can play around with the themes, and create an engaging website without any coding. You can use the drag and drop tool to mix and match the themes and create customised designs for various sub stores. Isn't it liberating? You can experiment with the look of your fashion marketplace website to make it look trendy and sassy, just as your global customers would want to shop from.

3. Communicate with the customers in the language they love

75% of international buyers prefer to buy from websites in their native language. When you consider going global, tapping in the new customers requires strategic planning and effective execution. It is wise here to go multilingual for your fashion enterprise brand. 

StoreHippo offers an inbuilt multilingual ecommerce solution that supports more than 100 different languages, which also includes Right to Left languages like Arabic and Hebrew. You can auto select the languages based on the rules you applied or choose manually what you want to translate on your multilingual marketplace website.

4. Sell more with mobile commerce 

Mobile commerce channels such as PWA marketplace website, or mobile apps work wonderfully in creating a niche for your business. Today, 33% of purchasing decisions are influenced by the reviews on mobile devices. Having a well defined m-commerce strategy along with your brand presence on multiple mobile channels can help your fashion marketplace achieve unrestrained growth.

Buying on mobile devices is easy and quick. When you give your customers a mobile platform to shop on, you increase the chance of selling your products. Leverage the next generation technology to create a strong m-commerce presence for your brand. StoreHippo’s inbuilt mobile apps builder helps you create your marketplace app without any coding. What’s more, just in a few clicks  you can have your PWA powered fashion marketplace to accelerate your growth.

5. Hassle free inventory and order management

Managing the inventories and orders for customers from across the globe is no mean task. To run your business seamlessly, you need to have a hassle-free inventory and order management system. Having a well rounded, automated, and feature rich OMS (ORDER Management System) and inventory management solutions on your marketplace website goes a long way in building a reputation for your business. Streamlined order fulfillment cycles build customer trust and loyalty which eventually helps your fashion marketplace create a niche . 

StoreHippo offers a built-in OMS that streamlines your order and inventory planning with advanced, automated, and simplified order processing. Efficient order management systems give great insights into business and enable brands to go for strategic planning for business growth and expansion. 

6. Offer personalised discounts and promotions

About 93% of shoppers use a coupon or discount code throughout the year. Leveraging discounts and promotions to attract customers is a time tested method of boosting sales. To implement strategically personalised discounts and promotions, you need a powerful discount engine at your disposal.

StoreHippo online marketplace solution provider offers an inbuilt discount engine to leverage personalised discounts and coupons to your buyers. You can implement multi-level discounts and offers on your fashion online marketplace to boost your conversion rates, some of them are: 

• Product level discount 

• Order-based discounts

• Time-specific coupon codes

• Seller specific offers 

• Group-based discount

• Category-based offers

• Location centric offers

By strategically mixing and matching various discounts, fashion marketplaces can create product bundles and use upsell and cross-sell techniques to boost order volume.

7. Leverage multi currency to your international customers

An enhanced customer experience is one of the most important factors contributing to survival in the competitive e commerce and fashion industry. And making checkouts frictionless by offering multi-currency payments is a sure-shot way of boosting customer confidence in your fashion brand. You can attune your business for higher conversions when you optimize prices in multiple currencies and reach a wider customer base. 

StoreHippo offers complete multi-currency support to enable the customers to make a purchase in the currency of their choice. With StoreHippo you can either enable IP based auto switch to the native currency or set different currencies for different locations. Alternatively, customers can choose the currency of their choice at the time of checkout.

8. Multiple payment options for seamless checkout

When you give your customers the most secure and smooth payment experience on your marketplace website, your conversions improve. With the availability of multiple payment options for your customers you eliminate the payment downtime and convert every potential sale.

StoreHippo provides you with 60+ payment gateways that make accepting payments simpler and safe. The international payment gateways help you offer convenient means of payments to global customers. StoreHippo’s payment solutions which includes digital wallets, netbanking, store credits etc. ensure you can offer a variety of  overseas transactions and a seamless checkout flow for faster conversions.

9. Choose global shipping solution

When you start selling globally, it becomes essential to ensure seamless and fast international deliveries. Timely deliveries not only keep your customers happy but also reduce efforts needed in tracking order, keeping customers informed, and handling situations related to returns and refunds due to delay in delivery. Building a streamlined, timely and reliable fulfilment channel for your global fashion marketplace can help your brand minimize firefighting and nail presence in new markets well.  

With StoreHippo, you get to choose from the 30+ pre-integrated logistics partners that are experienced in delivering in global markets. You can also integrate your custom global shipping provider or manage your own fleet of local delivery agents in different countries using the inbuilt delivery boy management solutions. With multiple shipping options for the order on your fashion marketplace, you can optimise the shipping costs, ensure quick deliveries, and keep your customers happy and satisfied in just a few simple steps.

10. Integrate your fashion marketplace with social platforms

66% of people perform some type of online research before making an ecommerce purchase. To create a niche for your fashion enterprise brand, it becomes imperative to create a strong online presence across diverse digital channels and platforms. And social platforms are one of the most frequented channels by fashion customers. Reports suggest the global average time spent on social media per day is 2 h and 27 min. A humongous opportunity to engage, interact with and convert your buyers.

Create your social presence across different platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter etc. by creating your brand pages. StoreHippo enables fashion marketplaces to easily integrate with various social platforms to create a broader brand presence. With StoreHippo you can have a buy button right on your social pages and enable your customers to eventually checkout seamlessly from your marketplace website.

Key takeaways

With global exposure, comes massive challenges. But with the right tools and ecommerce platform at your disposal, everything can fall right into place. When you target the global markets, you also unravel huge possibilities that help you take your fashion enterprise brand to newer and greater heights. 

The robust features provided by StoreHippo help you convert your users into customers and your customers into loyal customers. With a vast array of features from the powerful marketplace website solution provider, StoreHippo, building, running, and growing your international fashion marketplace becomes smooth sailing. 

Ready to go global with your fashion marketplace website? Explore StoreHippo, book your 14 day free trial now.