Atomic Mall
Atomic Mall is a multi-seller online marketplace based in Yakima, Washington. It was launched in July 2008 by founder Mike Shannon, who had previously worked as an independent software publisher and distributor, and had developed and operated private ecommerce sites in the retail sector. As of June 2010, Atomicmall.com hosts over 45,000 established members, roughly 1/4 million ACTIVE product listings, and nearly 8.4 million total items for sale with an aggregate market value approaching a quarter billion dollars.
Although many companies in this market space adhere to the online auction business model, Atomic Mall presently offers items in a fixed-price format, making it the online equivalent of a shopping mall, hence the origin of the domain name. Sellers on the site may also elect to receive offers on their items, making negotiations possible prior to completing sales. The site's search engine crawls each merchant's store when queries are entered and presents results which include all sellers' relevant items. Each seller is also able to create their own storefront space, each incorporating a high degree of customization including banners, fonts, categories, splash messages, and even special effects. When a product search is done within a seller's store, only items for that store are returned within the results, creating a "store within a store" effect for shoppers. Even though a shopper's activities can easily be confined to a single seller's storefront, access to the core site remains available through links on each page, allowing buyers to toggle between sitewide searches and centralized in-store browsing.
History
Shannon began experimenting with online sales in 1988, using bulletin board network systems such as RelayNet and FidoNet, several years before the internet and worldwide web had entered mainstream use. By 1989 he had turned his hobby into a full time software distribution business, gaining valuable experience in the brand new field of ecommerce as one of its early pioneers.
With the advent of the worldwide web in the 1990s, Shannon recognized the internet's tremendous potential and expanded his software distribution business to include web sites and ftp catalog retrieval using the (then) new technology. After expanding further by offering his products on third-party marketplace sites like Amazon.com and eBay, he began to see a need for a marketplace site which put both buyers and sellers on equal footing, and which made purchasing products as intuitive and free of obstacles as possible. Recognizing a potential void in the marketplace for such a service, Atomic Mall was born in January 2008 as a scratch-built site, followed by nearly six months of beta testing and development.
The first item sold on Atomic Mall was an oscillating bronze pedestal fan, which found a buyer on June 10, 2008. The first non-employee registered member was user Falcon, who has neither purchased nor posted any items for sale.
Atomicmall.com launched publicly on July 1, 2008 with its original 61 Charter Members. These members provided Shannon with valuable suggestions for key site features, security and overall usability. Charter Members are rewarded for their input with lifetime discounts on final sale fees (FSF), an increased listing limit, a unique store badge and other benefits.
By January 2009, Atomic Mall had nearly 6,500 active members and 120,000 listings. Its relatively quick growth caught the attention of many online sellers who had become disenchanted with established marketplaces and auction sites, and were looking for alternatives to help recover some of the profits being lost to rising listing, final value and payment processing fees. By April of that same year, membership had nearly doubled , with listing counts enjoying steady growth as well. Many of these new Atomic Mall sellers discovered the site through polls and posts created in online forums and discussion groups like Powersellers Unite, leading to periods of site-to-site transitioning which seemed to ebb and flow according to the prevailing sentiments at the time involving the venue(s) which were under fire. Typically these transitions and boycotts resulted from policy or administrative changes which proved to be unpopular with members at the various established marketplace sites. These periods of unrest seemed to have little effect on the bottom lines of the larger auction sites, but did benefit smaller sites like Atomic Mall by simultaneously increasing their brand awareness and seller bases.
Site Fees
Atomic Mall contains a fairly comprehensive array of ecommerce and inventory management features, allowing many sellers to utilize AM as their primary internet presence for the showcasing of their products and services. The site has no listing fees, and selling fees are performance-based, meaning there are no fees assessed if no sale is made. For successful transactions, final sale fees are calculated using a sliding scale, with a range of 6% to 0.75% of the final transaction value, with a minimum FSF of 10¢ on completed sales. Gold account-holders are able to list up to 2000 items with no monthly fees, while higher listing limits are available with upgraded account levels carrying a monthly subscription fee.
Public Response
On January 24, 2010, Auctionbytes.com held an open survey in which online sellers were asked to rank 15 auction and marketplace sites based on five criteria:
- Profitability
- Customer Service
- Communication
- Ease of Use
- Recommendation
After the results were published, Atomic Mall placed third overall, beating several of the more established venues like Amazon.com, eBay and eCRATER. In the individual categories, Atomic Mall finished 2nd in Communication, 3rd in Customer Service and Ease of Use, 6th in Recommendations and in the middle of the pack in Profitability.
The future
Founder Shannon has commented publicly that a type of auction format is likely to be introduced to Atomic Mall at some point in the near future, with the site poised to make use of their atomicauction.com domain. Details are few at this stage, but Shannon has revealed that the auction format will be unique and unlike the more traditional formats found on existing sites. In addition to auctions, it is rumored that a major redesign to the product view page is in the works, as well as several less drastic site upgrades to enhance checkout flow and site visibility.
See also
- Pheebay (July 7, 2008). AtomicMall.com Is Another Alternative For Fed Up eBay Sellers. Pheebay. Retrieved on June 22, 2010.