| > It's inventory, orders, and volume discounts. I see. That makes more sense. The web3 angle seems like a red herring. > It may not sound simpler because the tech underneath is somewhat complicated. But from a user point of view (as a retailer, and as a vendor) it's WAY easier. I think it's also SIGNIFICANTLY less work for the vendor to implement. Easier than bespoke, sure. But a web2 platform custom-built for this purpose would surely be easier than web3. Both to implement and to sell to vendors. No? > Does a vendor care if it's 1 large business or many small businesses in aggregate? Well, you definitely care about your counter-party's credit risk and the cost to you of assessing that risk! Cost of assessment: having one large counter-party vs. a ton of smaller counter-parties is a substantive difference even if they're identical credit risks. Actual risk: In practice a good number of those small counter-parties are small shops that might keep close to zero capital in their business. Particularly in the case of eg drop-shipping. A typical drop shipper is literally more risky than the end consumer! So counterparty's credit risk is wildly different. A bunch of worthless LLCs running on razor thin margins with very little cash in the bank vs. a large well-capitalized company with significant assets. > My goal is to make it easier for small businesses to compete with big business (as in retailers). I think this technology can solve some of the problems that previously made it not worth the time for vendors. Aggregating demand is a useful role for an intermediary, but the real product is financial services rather than information services. Playing the role of either auditor or guarantor for aggregated larger purchasing promises made by smaller entities would certainly be a real financial service for which you could charge a reasonable fee (ie take a cut of the discount). But still the vendor doesn't care. They just treat you as the large well-capitalized client. And your customers are the smaller consumers. |
Even better, if your goal is to promote competition rather than just make money: publish an open standard that can be implemented by anyone. Might not be much more than a specific set of columns that a CSV has to have to be considered an OpenVendorMagick(tm) inventory endpoint.