Quality Partnerships Lead to Customer Confidence – How DigiKey’s Marketplace Enables Both

In the world of online shopping, the term Marketplace often comes with some preconceived notions. Will I get my products on time? Is this a quality seller? What level of service can I expect? The biggest tradeoff within most Marketplaces is that they are either heavily geared toward enabling suppliers to sign up, which opens up the possibility of low-quality sellers and low customer confidence, or on the flip side to enable high customer confidence by imposing penalties, additional fees, and by forcing suppliers to fit their model which ends up being a poor experience for sellers.

As a newer player in the Marketplace world, DigiKey launched with the intent of breaking those notions and creating a unique scenario where both sellers and customers can come away with a great experience. So how did we do it? In a nutshell, we took nearly five decades of supplier vetting and partnership nurturing experience and strapped it to a rocket ship. In just under two years, we were able to quickly double our number of active supplier partnerships while maintaining the high service levels that customers have come to expect from our brand.

While the statements above may seem oversimplified, the keys to launching a Marketplace that balance both customer and supplier needs can be broken down into three main categories: Recruitment Strategy, Onboarding Experience, and Quality Control through a Supplier Success engagement

Within the realm of Recruitment Strategy, we take into account the types of suppliers that we want to engage with a focus on technology targets, customer intel, proven record of excellent service, and continuous analysis to locate our technology gaps. A constant cycle of research, discovery, and investigation into each potential supplier allows us to choose suppliers that not only fit into our company DNA but also suppliers that are in high demand from our existing customer base. We were able to quickly identify that our customers had interest in technologies like Industrial Automation, IoT, and Expanded Tool Selection among many others.

After a supplier has been properly vetted and approved, we begin the critical phase of Onboarding the supplier, which puts each supplier in the best possible position to succeed once they are ready to launch. DigiKey differentiates from other Marketplaces by not only taking extreme care in helping suppliers get onboarded but also by rolling a fully “assembled” supplier off the proverbial production line. We ensure that they have chosen top-running products, have provided the necessary content and data to help them sell, and have set up their shops to provide the best possible customer experience.

Lastly, after a supplier has launched, they are then turned over to our Supplier Success team who function as their mentors and guides. The Supplier Success team functions in two capacities, one is to monitor supplier quality by tracking various quality, sales, and service metrics, and the second is to offer advice on methods in which suppliers can increase their success by making improvements to their shops, adding SKUs, and by providing the best possible information on our website to drive traffic and sales.

By combining these three elements, we end up bringing on suppliers that are pre-vetted by both product type and service level, empowering them to have a successful launch on our platform and ensuring their long-term success, with an emphasis on relationship building and years of industry best practices. All of this leads to a result in which the customer can expect the same levels of service, product quality, and delivery times that they have come to expect from DigiKey throughout the years. Quality suppliers delivering products to a confident customer base, who says you can’t have the best of both worlds.