The art of onboarding marketplace brands pre launch!

The hardest task in any business is finding paying customers. It’s the lifeblood of any business, but getting your first customers is the hardest part when starting up.

This becomes even harder when you have no product to show your clients, something I faced when we started developing Cartreel. How was I supposed to get brands excited about Cartreel when I had nothing to show them? How could I communicate what an amazing opportunity this was with no evidence of it working, let alone without a visual product or app?

I guess my experience in sales and marketing came in handy when this challenge was thrown at me. The main thing sales teaches anyone is how to keep going through adversity, how to stay on your A-game even after hundreds of rejections or the empty sound of crickets after sending a kick-ass email or LinkedIn DM.

At least, that’s what I had learned the hard way after trying to sell door-to-door in London during the pandemic. Picture this: I’m all suited up, wearing a full-face shield and mask, knocking on strangers’ doors - people who genuinely thought human contact would kill their family. I looked like something out of an Area 51 movie, not exactly the most inviting look for someone trying to make a sale.

Experiences like that get you used to rejection, the feeling of hopelessness, and, most importantly, the grit and determination needed to push through and get the sale.

But resilience alone wasn’t enough to build a waitlist of 10+ brands without a physical product. What was possibly even more important was the way I’ve networked my whole life. I was never the guy who saw a party as just a chance to hang with my mates. No, no, no. It was an opportunity to make new friends, woo a stranger, and add them to my growing list of acquaintances.

This wasn’t a strategy; it was just something I naturally did because it made me feel good. And as it turns out, that habit paid off. Two of the brands we onboarded were friends I had picked up along this crazy life who just so happened to be in e-commerce.

So, what about the other 80%? Here’s a little breakdown for you:

• Brand 1 = Friend of a friend

• Brand 2 = Ex-schoolmate

• Brand 3 = Ex-employer

• Brand 4 = Met at an expo (I didn’t pay for a stand; I just walked up to his)

• Brand 5 = Met through LinkedIn, another founder in my area (networking win)

• Brand 6 = Met through Instagram, kept in contact for a year before he committed

• Brand 7 = Cold DM on Instagram

• Brand 8 = Cold DM on Instagram

• Brand 9 = Cold DM on Instagram

• Brand 10 = Cold DM on LinkedIn

We still haven’t launched, which means we could close even more before then, but these brands have already started integrating, which is a big win for us.

You might be wondering why this is so important...

Marketplaces are notoriously hard to start because of the chicken-and-egg problem. What comes first, brands or shoppers? You need brands to create content, but you need shoppers to provide value to brands.

That brings me to point number three: waitlists. If you want to build value for brands before launch, you need a waitlist of shoppers. Ours had 650+. This meant I could tell brands, "We have 650 shoppers waiting to buy products, and we still have a limited number of brands." This gave them a significant share of voice and an opportunity to capitalize on eager shoppers.

We ran a $1,000 shopping spree to get those shoppers on our waitlist and email list. From there, we nurtured them through email sequences to separate the giveaway punters from the people genuinely keen to try the app. This gave us a segmented audience for early access and adoption.

To conclude, if you want to build a successful marketplace from scratch without a product to show, there are three key components: grit, networking, and value creation. If you can nail all three, you’ll be on your way to building something that matters.