ChannelAdvisor vs Marketworks war is over
by Chris Dawson
ChannelAdvisor today announced that they have acquired Marketworks, their biggest competitor. James Scott from ChannelAdvisor said “Over the years, our two companies have competed on many levels, and ChannelAdvisor has always respected the Marketworks team and products; we’re excited to welcome them into the ChannelAdvisor family.”
In recent years Marketworks product offering has resulted in them losing customers to ChannelAdvisor. Reasons given have been the inability to list on multiple eBay sites with multiple eBay user IDs. Marketworks customers should find an easy migration path to ChannelAdvisor products in the future. Even for those loyal to Marketworks, long term the acquisition could be a blessing in disguise, as more sophisticated solutions open up new selling opportunities.
Jon Langley from jons-all-sorts, a long-time Marketworks customer, told us he would hope that the Marketworks option will remain. He said “I would like to think that they would still keep both platforms and pick and choose certain functions to port from one platform to the other.” Taking the best of both solutions would certainly make sense.
The biggest downside of both companies is the buying experience on eBay. Both companies have a customised eBay checkout enabling them to cross sell additional products from their own website. Buyers in general are not comfortable with a non-standard eBay checkout and some buyers avoid sellers using either solution simply for that one reason. If ChannelAdvisor want to attract more eBay sellers they need to implement a option without a custom checkout which still updates the sellers inventory.
7 Responses on "ChannelAdvisor vs Marketworks war is over"
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This is going to be an interesting transition and I have my opinions about why this happened and how the integration will work out but I believe at least for the short-term Q4 there will be few changes.
Randy I don’t know about the US, but there’s never really been room for two players in the UK. They’ve naturally been after each others customers for years.
I’m guessing Marketworks found it tough going to grow more and being bought out was the best thing that could have happened. It remains to be seen if ChannelAdvisor got a bargain or not but I suspect the price was fairly good from their perspective.
It sounds like the deal came about pretty quickly. I think this means that Zoovy and Infopia will need to do something also.
The combined company will make up 5% of eBay’s GMV. That is a sizable percentage. eBay’s a shareholder in CA, I wonder what they had to say about the purchase.
Wonders will never cease – ChannelAdvisor Aquires Marketworks
The two titans in the eBay auction management and e-commerce total solutions world collide:
ChannelAdvisor Acquires Marketworks – Combination cements ChannelAdvisor as top e-commerce channel management solution provider..
The press release says:
Richm…
Does anyone know what has happened to UK support? Our marketworks software is playing up big time, our checkout is performing terribly, and our general usage is enfuriatingly poor orders going missing customers disappearing etc. Coming up to our busiest point of the year, this is more than worrying and a bad Christmas could break us. We need tech support urgently and we’re being told nothing.
Anyone got any ideas???!!
[...] It’s definately the season for auction management companies to be acquired, it’s less than a month since ChannelAdvisor acquired Marketworks. Mind you, eBay already own a slice of ChannelAdvisor and now by default Marketworks, so their own portfolio of third party management solutions is growing! [...]
[...] are introducing new products following their acquisition of Marketworks (formerly Auctionworks). We’re hearing that customers of the auction management software [...]