A four-year-old eCommerce company based in the UK has been named the nation’s most trusted online marketplace.
While Amazon.co.uk rates at just 2/5 stars on Trustpilot, and eBay.co.uk at a shockingly low 1.7/5, Dorset-headquartered OnBuy has taken top spot in the rating site’s league tables with 4.6/5 across 20,000 reviews.
It even topped popular boutique marketplace Not On The High Street, which rated 4.2/5.
Billed as the world’s fastest-growing online marketplace, OnBuy now has more than 30 million products to choose from across thousands of categories spanning beauty, home and garden essentials, tech, toys and baby supplies.
Sales have soared from a run rate of £24m to over £200m with monthly users trending at just under seven million.
The company has seen 800 per cent growth in sales so far in January, compared to the previous year, and beat January 2020’s sales in just the first three days of 2021. It also rose 37 places in BusinessCloud’s 100 eCommerce Trailblazers ranking in Q4 2020, to take second spot.
It is clear that OnBuy is quickly acquiring market share and has expanded its seller base by 10 per cent each month since September 2020.
“OnBuy has been built on the foundations of transparency. We’ve grown by offering retailers a better, fairer platform to trade on, which has attracted the attention of growing numbers of customers,” said founder and CEO Cas Paton.
“Other marketplaces don’t always give customers the full picture, and some even promote their own products over those of the retailers selling with them. Naturally, this has led to a lack of consumer confidence in the online shopping experience.
“OnBuy set out to do things differently, with fairness, transparency, quality and trust for both retailers and customers being top of our agenda. That’s why becoming the UK’s most trusted marketplace, while achieving such incredible sales growth, is such a welcome achievement for our entire team.”
OnBuy lists all the retailers selling a product on the product page – including each retailers’ price, delivery information and reviews – so customers are fully informed and can easily choose which retailer to buy from.
It also showcases the product’s price history to foster full transparency with customers.
Paton continued: “The past four years of hard work have meant we were in the position to really maximise our ability to support retailers transitioning to online sales this year, bringing more great deals and unbeatable service to consumers.
“Not only was there a huge shift to online shopping, but we also benefited from consumers looking for more ethical ways to shop and ways to support small businesses from home.”
The firm quadrupled its team in 2020, partially as a result of the shift to online selling during COVID-19.
“Scaling our team in such massive numbers in the middle of a pandemic wasn’t the easiest feat, but we quickly adapted and have become stronger for it,” revealed Paton.
“We held virtual interviews with each of our 40-plus new recruits, with only a few new team members experiencing their first day in their new job in the office.
“There are now numerous members of our team that I haven’t met in person, but that hasn’t changed the fact that we’ve remained a close-knit team.
“We hire not only on skill but also very much on attitude. Everyone who joins our dynamic business shares my passion for the enormous difference OnBuy is making to both retailers and customers, and they’re excited by the idea of achieving something incredible with the business.
“I think that’s what’s enabled us to grow so quickly.”
He added: “Our plan is to double our sales by June; we’ll soon be hiring for another 30 positions to bolster the team as we scale up even more.
“We’ll also be opening our Series B funding round soon. We aim to secure backers that want to be a part of the ground–breaking journey we’re on to change the way the world looks at eCommerce.”