Etsy Alternative #13 - Cargoh

In this continuing series, we bring you a review of alternative selling venues, website hosting services, shopping carts, and basically anything else that you can use to sell your lovely
handcrafted goods. Today's feature is the marketplace Cargoh

Tagline: Social marketplace for independent art, design and culture

Company information: Based on Vancouver, BC, Canada and the creation of Paul & Cariann Burger with 2 FT and 5 PT employees. As of 10/1/10, Cargoh lists 4 thousand items from 425 stores. International.

Items that can be sold: Cargoh does not specify handmade but defines acceptable products as “an eclectic collection of well designed goods in a balanced marketplace." They specifically do not accept resale items or supplies. (They've taken down the FAQ to update them, but here are the Terms of Use)

Who can sell: Cargoh started out accepting all sellers but now prescreens applications by a criteria listed on their Sell Page: Great Design, Great Photos, Know Who You Are. Some sellers who set up shops before prescreening went into effect were "un-accepted" by the site and notified by email a couple of weeks ago.

Cost: No listing fees, 3.5% sales transaction fee, door open to future monthly subscription fee.

Front Page Features: Thumbnails of products fill the top of the front page and are accessed as “All” “Newest” and “Most Popular". The bottom of the front page includes a Featured Seller, and Things We Love (which is the same feature in their blog) which are selected by the site owners. There's also an official Cargoh store (sound familiar?)

Storefront: Products and pictures are loaded on a one page template, the 2nd page lets the seller assign a SKU and inventory level. Listings can be either “activate” or “inactive” and appear on the Seller Dashboard in 2 distinct sections only while in Editing Mode. To view traffic to your store, the inactive and active items are listed together. Categories and Tags are being redefined and added as the site adds more sellers and product listings.

Features/Seller Tools: Banner, Avatar, store policies, Shipping Templates, Unlimited listings & photos, inventory control, and Google Analytics. Your store can be integrated with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media outlets. You can also add video and music.
Once you list your item for the first time, it goes to the front of the queue when viewers access products by Category from the main Search function and as a Front Page feaure under "Newest".

Payment Processors: Paypal

Community: Blog with a site-selected promo section, news and help, plus an opt-in Newsletter. The site also has an Events section accessed from top menu where members can list events using a same-page template on the right hand side of the page.

Customer Service: email only, but they usually respond within a couple of hours. They have a Twitter and Facebook page also.

Impressions from The Funny One: I've used the site every day for 2 months. Navigation for sellers around the site is still fairly awkward and inefficient, especially when you need to edit listings or any other sections of the store. You have to keep going up to the top of the page to click on "Dashboard" to return back to the editing section of your store.

There is currently no function for rearranging items in your shop so the most recently listed items appear last (instead of first).

Your product photos in your storefront are cropped in an odd way, which doesn't allow a full thumbnail view, you have to click on each item to see the first full image. They also have a SALE designation on the listing template, but if you pick that, a big red slash labeled "SALE" shows up and obscures the initial thumbnail.

While the site is still working out exactly how it wants to present itself, their Front Page looks like most other sites for this kind of marketplace format, and the 2 Promo Boxes are standard and selected by the site owners. Sellers don’t currently have any access to within-site ads or promotions. Links to FB and Twitter are offered now on most marketplace sites, so those features are nothing new.

A recent article about the site in AuctionBytes noted in an interview with the Burgers that Cargoh is making a concerted effort to differentiate itself from Etsy, which it sees as “female and craft centered”, by focusing on the indie market. What this actually means isn’t clear. However, it is what new sites are trying to address — to appeal to and attract sellers who want to find an alternative to Etsy because of Etsy’s size which just hit 7 million listings and a flood of changes that don't seem to have much logic & have dramatically and negatively affected many sellers’ ability to attract traffic and sales.

There's no doubt that there are plenty of sellers to fill the pages of the new Cargoh.com, but only time will tell whether or not they are able to define and find the right shopping audience AND come up with the right mix of seller-tools that work. Since we have 6 years of experience with marketplace sites, what sellers need is well-known; sites that don't address this may ultimately not be able to recruit enough sellers to achieve financial viablility which results from their ability to drive traffic and sales.

Right now, there are too many similarities to other sites to make it stand out as something new for sellers looking for a better marketplace model. The big plus is that they prescreen their sellers which may give them a leg up as they further define themselves and try to stand out from the crowd of all-too-similar marketplace sites.

It's a perfect time to figure out whether or not a new site can attract traffic and sales because we're fast approaching the holiday season for retail. Sellers who are accepted at Cargoh.com may find traffic and sales success that are now out of reach on Etsy. Listings are free, so if you make it through the approval process, it's certainly worth a try.