Why Most Marketplaces Fail And SMEs Get Left Behind
By Sonya IRYSS Editorial - November 2024
Most marketplaces were never built for small brands. They prioritise scale over quality, traffic over seller outcomes, and charge fees to any brand willing to join often resulting in thousands of indistinguishable listings and a race to the bottom on price.
This model works well for low-cost, mass-produced products. But for SME brands trying to grow a real business, it creates the opposite of what they need: intense competition, poor margins, and no long-term support. Worse still, many of the largest platforms are now flooded with cheap imported goods and are actively removing small brands to make space for paid placements, factory listings, and private label sellers.
Even marketplaces that claim to support independent businesses are becoming overcrowded, with 4,000 to 7,000 brands in a single category, and limited room for newcomers. The result is not visibility it's invisibility.
At IRYSS, we chose a different path. Our platform is curated. Every brand is onboarded with purpose, not volume. Instead of charging to be listed, we invest in infrastructure that helps brands succeed from design support and product photography to fulfilment, storefronts, and real-time inventory sync. We serve fewer brands better, because results matter more than catalogue size.
The next generation of commerce platforms will not be built around volume. They will be built around outcomes. And for SMEs, that shift is long overdue.
