Startup eCommerce platform, Mercarto has announced a partnership with AliExpress, opening up a potential inventory of 300 million items.
The deal makes Mercarto one of very few UK online retail businesses with access to the AliExpress product inventory. In May, Mercarto announced a deal to bring UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones on board as a business partner and 50 per cent shareholder. Mercarto is based at the FastForward tech accelerator at UKFast Campus.
Sean Brown, Mercarto Founder said, “we’re pushing a major focus on product development. We've restructured the way we source products and having access to one of the biggest product resources in the world, gives us a huge baseline inventory to attract new store owners and UK-based suppliers. Mercarto’s goal is to become the largest accessible database of dropship products in the world while providing the best-in-class eCommerce platform.
“We've set benchmarks to guarantee the quality of the products we pull from AliExpress. That'll leave us with an eventual inventory of around 3 million individual products, which opens up a huge amount of choice for our store owners.
“The new personalisation options mean stores can be stamped with their owners’ individuality, all within a template that remains optimised for conversions. We've also absorbed the delivery fees within our margins, so every product is now delivered free of charge.
“Ultimately everything we do is about giving our community of store owners as much choice and as much individuality as possible.”
The news comes as Mercarto, the recently launched service offering up-and-coming entrepreneurs the opportunity to launch an end-to-end online retail business in just two clicks, unveils a raft of new features and options.
New features include personalised store fronts, with billboard images, logos, colour palettes, buttons and fonts all customisable to give stores a new level of individuality. There’s also a newly optimised interface and custom variant and pricing options.
The ‘Mercarto Seller Network’ is now live within the platform, allowing product creators, manufacturers, wholesalers and suppliers to make their products available to any other seller on the network, giving them greater reach and boosted sales.
