Nautical Commerce Featured in McFadyen Suite Spot Report

Nautical Commerce is honored to be featured in McFadyen Digital’s latest Marketplace Suite Spot report, released in the fourth quarter of 2023. 

The Marketplace Suite Spot report evaluates and compares the top marketplace development platforms on the market, diving deep into their capabilities and use cases. The report aims to provide readers with a comprehensive analysis to guide their decision-making process around marketplace platforms.

Nautical is featured amongst eight other platforms as a marketplace vendor to consider in your evaluation process. Why?

In our own words:   

“Nautical believes that multi-vendor experiences require orchestration between commerce, fintech, and logistics workflows in order to be successful. By weaving multi-vendor through all of these components, Nautical provides unique efficiencies in the core processes supporting multi-vendor commerce as well as timely, contextual visibility communication other solutions inherently lack. One of our most significant differentiators is the fact we are an end-to-end platform complete with commerce capabilities. Because Nautical can be used standalone and does not require an underlying 1P commerce platform to function, Nautical can help organizations launch marketplaces very quickly without complicating their existing commerce workflows.”

Want the TLDR? Below we walk through:

• How McFadyen Assesses Vendor Options
• Nautical’s “sweet” spot
• Nautical's differentiating features

🔵 Download the full report 🔵  

How McFadyen assesses vendor options

The marketplace platform that’s right for your business will depend on your unique requirements and goals. 

The McFadyen report explains that it looks at two major criteria when assessing vendors:

1. Marketplace maturity

According to the marketplace maturity model, there are five levels of maturity in digital ecommerce: 

• Level 1- 1st party ecommerce: First-party ecommerce means that the operator owns all of it’s own inventory and is responsible for managing everything from merchandising to pricing to fulfillment. 
• Level 2-  Dropshipping: With a dropshipping model, products are shipped directly to the end buyer by a third-party supplier. This means that the operator doesn’t hold onto inventory. 
• Level 3-  3rd party marketplace: A marketplace models means that third-party sellers ship products directly to the end buyer, but they also take on product management. In other words, they handle product uploads, merchandising, fulfillment, returns, etc. The Marketplace operator is the curator. 
• Level 4- Quantitative management: With an already operating marketplace, the operator leverages metrics to drive strategy.
• Level 5-  Optimizing: The final and ongoing stage of marketplace maturity is optimizing— when the operator can focus on improvements to features like vendor promotions, onboarding automation, etc. 

Depending on your business's current maturity, you will have different needs.

2. Marketplace/dropship scale

The second thing McFadyen looks at in this report is scalability. Even though many of the platforms may have the ability to scale, this part of the assessment is based on proven live marketplaces and/or dropshipping operations. 

They break down scalability by:

• High Volume: $1 billion of GMV with 1,000,000 SKUs from 5,000 sellers and a budget of $2,000,000. 
• Mid-Volume: $100 million of GMV with 100,000 SKUs from 500 sellers and a budget of $500,000. 
• Low-Volume/MVP: $10 million of GMV with 10,000 SKUs from 50 sellers and a budget of $100,000 

It’s important to note that platforms aren’t assessed based on every single possible use case they can help solve, but rather their “sweet spot.”

Nautical’s sweet spot 

According to McFadyen, Nautical’s current ideal sweet spot is dropshipping, third-party marketplace, and quantitative management. In terms of scalability, Nautical falls between low to mid-volume ($10 million GMV to $100 million GMV). 

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The report explains, 

“Nautical is a rapidly improving newer player to this market. While the depth of their out-of-the-box feature set is not class leading against some of the more mature (and pricier) options, the platform-as-a-service event-driven approach will be attractive for those seeking such flexibility. Over 300 published, documented APIs mean customization levels are high while the subscription model makes costs more predictable.” 

McFadyen Digital highlights Nautical’s strengths

There are many features you’ll find offered by the majority of development platforms. For example, integrating with VAN vendors, product listings, handling mid-volume transactions, open APIs, multi-seller check-out, and more. 

When it comes to Nautical’s strengths, McFadyen provides this brief overview: 

• Offers an integrated marketplace and capable ecommerce experience, which can help ensure both a cohesive user experience and help go-to-market faster.
• Platform-as-a-service model with event-driven microservices architecture means great flexibility.
• Cloud agnostic architecture means organizations can use their preferred cloud configuration.
• Strong APIs with good documentation aid development timelines.
• Company is motivated and capable of helping clients succeed.
• Platform has strong native fintech and logistics capabilities.

Features that differentiate Nautical

There are a number of features McFadyen highlights that differentiate Nautical from its competitors. A few of them are listed below. 

Small team

Nautical has a small but mighty team of employees. We're a startup and our small team works at a pace that can keep up with our customers' business needs. This allows us to stay agile and offer attentive support to our customers. 

Reasonable prices 

In the Suite Spot report, relative costs are depicted by the number of dollar signs — ranging from one to four. Sitting at two dollar signs, Nautical is amongst the most reasonably priced options for marketplace platforms. 

Automated seller payments

Marketplace payments are a sticking point for many operators. You can keep track of all your seller payments and approvals within Nautical’s platform. Learn more about how Nautical manages vendor payouts. 

See for yourself 

Identifying the optimal platform for your business requires a keen understanding of the options available. 

McFadyen's Suite Spot report spotlights Nautical Commerce for its proficiency in dropshipping, third-party marketplace facilitation, and quantitative management. Celebrated for its PaaS model, robust documentation, and development flexibility, coupled with strong native fintech and logistics capabilities, Nautical shines with its cohesive user experience and rapid market entry. 

For an in-depth perspective, check out the full Marketplace Suite Spot Report, or book a call with our team.