Meshbox Design sells directly from the meshbox.com website as well as through miryestore.com, the online store of Mirye Software, publishers of Shade and Runtime Revolution. But Meshbox also sells content through a number of brokerages, too. Brokerages are an unusual phenomenon primarily in the prosumer content licensing; a brokerage isn’t the same as a reseller though. Brokerages often have a standard license, monopolize the relationship with the customer and have other restrictions too. Meshbox, like other providers such as the members of poservendors.com works with several.
Here are the qualities to look for in a great brokerage as a vendor. I am going to update this list as time goes on, so don’t be surprised if this is short at first. If you are a brokerage and want to dispute something here, feel free to contact us – we strive to be accurate.
Reseller Margins
Resellers in the technology field pay around 70% of USSRP of a product to a vendor or to a distributor (the distributor then pays the vendor). This means the reseller is keeping 30% of the sale, and his base expenses are coming out of that. He is basically putting your product on a shelf and not much else. Resellers will charge you for better promotional value.
Meshbox Position: The traditional reseller strategy is the best because it allocates resources only as a market action. High brokerage margins encourage vendors to find every possible way to sell around them and acquire their customers.
Best Brokerages Based on Reseller Margins
Content Paradise (all content), Cornucopia 3D (Vue “protected” content)
FTP Based Uploads
FTP is fast, especially if you have a lot of files, such as product files and a lot of graphics files. Having to load files using forms via http in a browser is about the worse way to handle them. However for small products with few support graphics, a browser can save some time.
Meshbox Position: Fast uploads means a vendor can release products simultaneously through multiple vendors, making the most of any marketing actions. FTP uploading is therefore a must.
Best Brokerages for Uploads
Cornucopia 3D (both http and FTP)
Evaluation
Some brokerages have sometimes intensive vetting processes to ensure a certain conformity in quality, file presentation or to confirm that a vendor isn’t violating terms related to contacting customers. Others are just like resellers – they collect your “box” and sell it through their site. Brokerages offset the costs of this vetting process by taking those costs out of the vendor’s margin (ie they do not increase the price of the product to cover their costs or absorb it). In traditional sales, if a reseller gets a lot of returns, they stop carrying a product or stop carrying the products of a particular vendor.
Meshbox Position: The market should evaluate the quality of a product. Most evaluation processes are thinly disguised methods of a brokerage to maintain control over the customer relationship and subordinate the vendor to whatever business strategy the brokerage does not want to share with the vendor.
Best Brokerages for Evaluation
Content Paradise
More to come…
