The onboarding funnel
Marketplace supply is not a contact form. Treat onboarding as an operations product:
- Application
- Verification / KYC (as required for your category)
- Commission and category assignment
- Catalog readiness
- First order watchlist
Application fields that actually matter
Capture what you need to route and settle — not a vanity profile:
- Legal / trade name
- Categories and regions served
- Approximate SKU count
- Fulfillment model (own logistics vs marketplace shipping)
- Preferred payout method
Commission assignment
Default to category-based rates, with optional vendor overrides for strategic sellers. Document the rule in admin so finance and support share one source of truth.
Catalog readiness gate
Do not mark a vendor “live” until:
- At least N SKUs approved
- Media quality standards met
- Inventory sync path tested (CSV or API)
First-sale war room
For the first 10 orders of a new vendor, ops should watch:
- Acceptance latency
- Cancel rate
- Customer complaints
- Payout discrepancy tickets
This is where marketplace trust is won or lost.