Envision this scenario: Your average consumer — we’ll call her Jasmine — goes to purchase a new pleasure gadget that she saw earlier on an Instagram page. She searches for it and finds about 12 different varieties sold by eight different vendors. She shortlists four, checks out the brand’s reputation and product reviews, and finally she adds two shiny-looking products made by two different brands to the cart. She then gets a first-time visitor discount code and places the order. Two days later, FedEx drops her order at her doorstep.
Behind the scenes, when the order was placed, the website sent a message to its warehouse, where the two brands have about 3,000 units of inventory. The cool chap at the warehouse picked the products from the bins, sent them to the packing station where the order was packed, labeled and handed them to the FedEx pickup guy along with 2,000 other orders for that day.
It’s not too far off into the future that the ecommerce model in the pleasure products industry will take over.
The website that Jasmine ordered from is an online adult marketplace. It has about 1,000 vendors (manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers) that showcase thousands of different products for adults. Think of it like Amazon, but just for adult products. It’s something like a shopping mall where all the stores sell only adult products and you’re sure to find every type of dildo, butt plug, chastity cage or nipple pincher that you can imagine and that exists out there. The customer gets the largest variety possible, and will most likely purchase from here again as they benefit from competitive pricing and unbiased reviews of the product. Shoppers know support will be handled by the marketplace, shipping will be prompt, payment will be secure and so will their privacy and data.
The vendors are equally happy, as they can reach a much larger spectrum of potential customers without having to operate or maintain a B2C business, or having to worry about marketing, inventory management, sales, order processing or customer support. Their cost of doing business goes down, and thus, their selling price can be more competitive. The marketplace also benefits from fees paid by vendors; at the end of the day, it's a happy ending for everyone.
This is the future of adult ecommerce and I will give you four reasons why.
Marketing: Very often when I engage with my peers, and speak to up-and-coming online brands, one of the top three challenges they face is figuring out how to reach the right audience, what it means to engage and how much budget to allocate for each online channel. Often, they worry about bringing in the right traffic, and enough of it to drive sales. They contemplate choosing between Facebook or YouTube ads, email marketing, Google Ads, SEO that’s organic and paid, backlinks, rankings and more.
What if you did not have to worry about any of this at all? If that sounds like a big relief, then an adult marketplace model is your best bet. The marketplace will focus on marketing and bringing the traffic to the store. All you have to do is list your products and watch them fly off the shelves.
Sales: Let's talk dollars and cents. Sales is what makes or breaks a company. If you are new to ecommerce, you will want to know that sales is probably the hardest feat to achieve, and it takes a combination of trust, credibility, appeal, reviews, ease of operation, great presentation, security, privacy and a few other unique selling propositions to convert a potential visitor into a buying customer. All of this can happen within three to 10 minutes of someone landing on your online store. Sales are also the culmination of all efforts you put into building your brand, securing a loyal following, the ROI in your marketing dollars, and the end destination of the product that you have to sell. So, even if you have the brightest-looking store in the whole wide internet, with the largest collection of products and most shiny bells and whistles, if there are no sales, you are DOA, my friend. When you list your brand and set up your store on a marketplace, they bring the traffic (customers) in, they manage the customer journey and they handle all aspects of the sale, from welcome to order payment. It's a no-brainer here.
Fulfillment and inventory management: When the sales are in, the next labor-intensive job is to fulfill that order. If you have to set up a fulfillment mechanism, it involves a warehouse, shelves, inventory, supplies and labor. That's probably half of your operation costs. Then comes the inventory management and the related analytics and data processing to evaluate what's selling, what's in stock, what's not selling and when to re-order and re-stock based on minimum and maximum levels. Why not let the marketplace take care of this? Ship them your inventory after listing. When the order comes in, they will fulfill the orders and you will monitor your sales, fulfillment and inventory on your merchant panel 24/7. No need to invest capital in this complex process; keep your operations lean and work stress-free. This is another reason why the marketplace model is the perfect match for every manufacturer who wants to go direct-to-consumer in today's world.
Customer support: The customer is king, and your customer support team is the crew that makes the king ring your cash register. Every time a customer contacts you, a satisfactory experience must be delivered. Now, you can do this in-house, and possibly spread yourself thin or you can just let the marketplace handle this for you. Set your product rules, expectations and return policies in order and let the entire customer experience be handled by the marketplace. When the A-to-Z of customer support is handled by a proficient team of the marketplace, your eyes can stay on the core of your business. Better focus leads to more productivity, better output and more growth. You can thank me later.
I speak from my own experience of 10 years in the ecommerce world and eight years of it in adult business. Now, as we continue to taste the sweet flavors of success and smell the aroma of higher revenues, it’s time that we prepare ourselves to evolve and adapt to the changing trends of commerce, and particularly ecommerce. It’s not too far off into the future that the ecommerce model in the pleasure products industry will take over (if it hasn’t already done so) brick-and-mortar retail as we know it. The business of pleasure products is on the verge of going mainstream, and you want to be ready when the doors open and a newer audience is ushered in. It may not be cost-effective for every entrepreneur out there to build their own ecommerce store from start to finish, so when enough such entrepreneurs unite, then it will be the right time for an adult marketplace to be born. And when it does, remember: You heard it from me first.
Raj Armani is the COO and co-founder of online retailer ImBesharam.
