r/ecommerce101

Hey everyone,

Like most of you, I'm completely fed up with the current state of online marketplaces—the constant fee hikes, non-existent seller protections, automated customer service, and platforms that consistently side with scammers.

Instead of just complaining, I’m seriously looking into developing a new reseller platform from scratch. I want to build something that actually treats sellers like partners, not cash cows.

Before I dive deep into development, I want to get some advice and raw feedback from the people who deal with the daily grind of reselling.

If you could design the perfect marketplace, what would it look like?

Here are a few core pillars I am already planning to focus on:

• Fair & Transparent Fees: No shifting goalposts. Either a low flat rate or a strictly capped percentage so you actually keep your margins.
• Real Seller Protection: An actual, fair review process for disputes instead of automatically forcing refunds and letting buyers keep the inventory.
• Human Support: Customer service run by real people who understand the business, not bots repeating a script.
• Better Search & Visibility: No paying extra "promoted listing" fees just to get your items seen normally.

What are your absolute biggest pain points with platforms like eBay right now? What is the one feature or policy that would make you instantly cross-list or completely jump ship to a new platform?

Appreciate any advice, warnings, or feature wishlists you can throw my way! Let's build something better. Thank you all.

How do you make the following decisions?

\- what bundles to sell
\- how to personalise discounts?
\- predict customers about to churn and handle them?

Hello folks,

I'm Leon, co-founder of Akikumo and founding mod of r/EcommerceMerchant.

I created this space to share lessons, playbooks, and best practices I'm picking up as I build my company. I've spent my career helping ecommerce brands grow and want to put useful things out into the world.

Who I am

I'm building Akikumo after 20+ years in ecommerce — including Amazon, where I led 3P partnerships, and NBCUniversal, where I was on the founding team that built ShoppableTV and ShopwithGolf, the first social commerce TV experience. A big part of what I saw at scale was how quickly inventory friction accumulates and how hard it is to catch without the right visibility. That's a big part of why I built Akikumo.

What this community is for

All kinds of content that could genuinely help a growing brand:

• Case studies from merchants we work with (with their permission and real numbers where possible)
• Merchandising tactics that moved the needle
• Marketing and acquisition experiments — what worked and what bombed
• Operations and fulfillment learnings
• Best practices picked up across dozens of merchant relationships

The deal

I'll always be transparent when something involves Akikumo or one of our customers. You'll know the source. What I ask in return: engage honestly. Push back if something doesn't match your experience. Share your own data. Call out anything that feels off.

If you have proof you're helping merchants — case studies, frameworks, hard-won lessons — post it here. Doesn't matter if you're a founder, operator, agency, or tool builder. Useful is useful.

How to get started

1. Drop an intro below — what you're working on, who you're working with.
2. Post a case study, question, or hot take.
3. Know a merchant who'd value this? Please share it with them.

Thanks for being here early.

— Leon / u/Akikumo

I run a small online business and I’ve been trying to get more organized with sales, inventory, and expenses.

Right now I’m basically using a mix of spreadsheets, notes, and different apps, and it’s starting to feel messy and hard to keep up with.

I wanted to ask people here who actually run small businesses:
How are you keeping track of everything?
Are you using one system or multiple tools?
What actually works long-term without getting complicated?

I’m just trying to understand how other people handle this because I feel like I’m overcomplicating things.

Hi I’m just about to launch a store selling vibrators and lives etc in Australia and I’ve been told although I can have a shopify storefront, I can’t use Shop pay and need a third party payment gateway

Im really annoyed as I didn’t factor in having to pay additional fees on each transaction and I didn’t want to pay high fees to a high risk merchant when I’m selling high end products to women that is very vanilla

I can see other stores in Australia using Shopify and shop pay selling the same things so my questions are:

1. Do I just run the risk and launch and see how I go with Shop Pay?

2. Are there any good third party high risk merchants that don’t charge huge amounts or require you to be already making large volume sales

3. Am I better just to jump ship now before i launch to Bigcommerce or similar?

4. Are payment brokers a thing?

Thank you so much- I’ve already spent so much money on development and stock and it’s such a steep learning curve that my product choice just keeps causing roadblocks!!

Complete newbie so appreciate the advice! 😅🙏