Crate & Barrel Expands its Online Shopping Options

It wasn’t so long ago—back in February, actually—that Crate & Barrel first announced a connection to Apple Pay.

Now, about nine months later, Crate & Barrel is stepping up its online operations even further by offering a new and “highly curated” online marketplace for users to get a look at what’s going on in home décor and how to best improve their own houses’ looks accordingly.

Some have suggested that Crate & Barrel’s new move really isn’t so new at all, but rather a similar measure to the one Amazon took not so long ago, augmenting its availability by opening the floor up to external sellers.

Joining up with RevCascade, who is perhaps best known for giving retailers more product offerings, Crate & Barrel is describing the release as “an extended aisle of unique products”, more of an adjunct to the main website than a separate property.

This isn’t a new plan, either; over 250 retailers so far, ranging from Saks Fifth Avenue to Walmart have brought in third-party sellers in a bid to offer more products without having to necessarily keep said products on hand. Amazon has been taking this approach for years now, and it’s generally delivered value.

The downside, however, is that should something go wrong with a third-party seller, it may reflect poorly on the vendor itself. If someone buys a used DVD from Amazon, for example, and gets a bad one, the shopper may not blame Louie’s DVD shop selling through Amazon, but rather Amazon. This can often be beaten with some specific rules, or user feedback sections devoted to discussing individual user performance, but it’s still a risk that’s run.

Crate & Barrel has been making clear advancements in online selling, and soon, a whole slate of new options on this front will emerge, meaning more mobile commerce, and more mobile payments, possibilities to follow. Only time will tell how successful it all is, but Crate & Barrel is following a comparatively well-worn path, and should be able to head off the major potential problems in advance.