With over 25 million app downloads, Tophatter is a thriving marketplace. Its ever-growing base of dedicated shoppers loves the unique selling format of quick auctions. Shoppers are driven to compete against one another to win anything from a drone to an eyeshadow palette, and everything in between, all within a 90-second auction. Combined with it’s robust loyalty program, Tophatter is bringing the fun back to shopping.
So who are the Merchants selling on this marketplace and are how do you know if you should join their ranks? Here are the 5 things you need to know about selling on Tophatter.
Image source: Tophatter
- Tophatter is a discovery marketplace: Unlike Amazon and eBay, Tophatter shoppers are not usually looking for something in particular when they enter the app. In fact, over 95% of items bought on Tophatter are not preceded by a search query. This means shoppers spend far more time on Tophatter than other shopping platforms, 8-10 minutes on average, so every auction gets seen.
- Discovery marketplaces are built to move volume: The right products at the right price point can move huge volume fast in Tophatter’s model. With hundreds of auctions running concurrently, shoppers are always in the app and ready to compete for the items they want. Tophatter is live in 14 countries, and Sellers who ship globally will see more sales at every time of day.
- Sellers have control: Tophatter has evolved quite a bit since it launched in 2011. In the last year, the company brought a renewed focus to the marketplace: give sellers more control. Sellers understand what shoppers want and can spot market trends quickly. Tophatter empowers them by providing tools to test new products with low risk, and by showing marketplace intelligence data to see how categories are performing.
- Shelf space is determined by the Seller with Scheduling Fee Bidding: With Tophatter’s Scheduling Fee Bidding model, Sellers bid against one another for auctions slots, aka “shelf space.” For known winners, products that Sellers know perform well on Tophatter, Merchants bid competitively to move volume fast. When testing new products, Sellers are more conservative with their bids, scheduling a product for auction 10-20 times to see how it performs.
- It’s a category agnostic platform, where you can test selling anything: At higher price points, Tophatter sells electronics from refurbished laptops, tvs, and iPads to drones; new and used designer and big name branded bags and accessories; and fine jewelry. But there is a huge range of items that sell at the $10-$30 price point too, including apparel, health & beauty, home & garden, the list goes on. Because testing products is so easy, and can be done with a very small investment, Sellers can test their products to find their winners, and then dial up the volume on those winners.
Come experience the sales you are missing! Tophatter is a Feedonomics partner, apply to sell and receive a credit of $200 in Seller fees. Have questions? Tophatter’s onboarding team is available to help. Email hisellers@tophatter.com and mention Feedonomics.
Brian Roizen is the Cofounder and Chief Architect of Feedonomics, a full-service feed optimization platform that optimizes product data for hundreds of channels. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and eCommerce webinars, and regularly contributes to Search Engine Land and other industry-leading blogs. Brian graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
