Mercari USA Marketplace Just Raised It's Shipping Prices Again
In a surprise move, during a time that Mercari USA (according to many sellers discussing the subject on the Mercari Sellers Group on Facebook) seems to be experiencing a sales slump, and a time in which Mercari Corporate has decided the way for Mercari to succeed in Japan, Europe and future marketplaces is to ensure the success of its Mercari USA venture; many sellers are concerned that the new shipping labels which significantly increase Mercari's Shipping prices will continue the trend of slow sales into the next three quarters of 2018.
Mercari is an eBay like Marketplace that originally launched via an Iphone and Android based smart device app, known and highly recognized for its amazingly low shipping prices.
At the end of 2017, Mercari raised it shipping prices and changed its shipping options focusing on USPS Labels and FedEx Smart Post Labels. During the five months FedEx Smart Posts Labels were pushed, both shoppers and its individual sellers greatly complained about lost packages, Mercari allowing shoppers to keep a product and receive a refund if a package shipped with FedEx Smart Post were delayed, un-scanned or otherwise lost in transit to the bewilderment, confusion and often anger of many sellers.
After a great outpouring of complaints concerning FedEx Smart Post shipping often taking over 14 days or longer to arrive even short distances, Mercari decided in this new update to drop all of the FedEx Smart Post shipping labels except the 1 LB Label which remains Smart Post.
It was obvious to new sellers and former app sellers who have migrated to the new Mercari Website to conduct their listings and product creations, that Mercari is still very much a NOOB at running a website based Marketplace, when all shipping label and new product listing creations were halted due to a completely non-functional non-fully implemented new shipping system. All other functions for creating a new product appeared to be functioning, but when trying to create the shipping label on the newly redesigned pop up shipping menu, sellers were shown menu options that had no values or choices available. It was embarrassing to witness such a high profile company releasing a non-functional key system via its website, not to mention a marketplace doing it. I suppose moving from running a marketplace on a tiny app to a marketplace on a website, has new challenges Mercari's current team is still learning to work with.
As for Mercari keeping the 1 LB FedEx Smart Post label - many sellers are right to be concerned in their suggestion that this is a big mistake on Mercari's side. Mercari shoppers are already sour and bitter from the previous five months of experience with FedEx SmartPost. FedEx Smart Post and FedEx Ground have extremely different shipping and delivery times, and both have different drop off location requirements.
While the FedEx Ground shipping labels are actually very competitive compared to the shipping labels other marketplaces can offer for FedEx Ground, the new USPS labels are now a little less competitive. For instance a label that formerly cost $9.00 for a 3 to 10 Pound US Priority Label is now $13.00 equaling a total unexpected increase of $4.00 out of a shoppers pocket.
Even though this is significantly below retail USPS label prices, many sellers believe they may be able to get better prices by using a third party label through PayPal or Shippo.com.
Even though this is significantly below retail USPS label prices, many sellers believe they may be able to get better prices by using a third party label through PayPal or Shippo.com.
Mercari Corporate Japan invested a significant amount of money into Mercari USA this year to help expand its sales push into competition against eBay, putting it into the second place for most popular new and previously owned marketplace venues.
Only time will tell how well these new moves are going to pay off for Mercari, but it's obvious that its going to need some fresh ideas and better implementations to help the marketplace pull out of its current slow spell.