Vendio Grows from eBay Auction Manager to Multichannel Platform

Vendio got its start in 1999 as a provider of tools for eBay sellers, a focus reflected in its original company name, AuctionWatch. This year, it revamped and repriced its platform, cleaning up and consolidating its various products and services, and now offers sellers a three-pronged approach: an ecommerce-enabled store with support for eBay and Amazon marketplaces - what Vendio's VP of Marketing and Business Development Harry Hirschman calls a "Triple Threat."

This week Vendio is announcing its fall release with enhanced support for Amazon, another sign that merchants - and developers - who got their start on eBay are finding Amazon irresistible.

Vendio's fall release offers an enhanced Amazon Match and Publish feature that lets merchants match items from eBay, their online store, or from a spreadsheet to the Amazon catalog in bulk for quick posting to Amazon.

Vendio is also adding support for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to help multi-channel merchants manage their inventory from the Vendio interface wherever the items are listed.

Hirschman predicted Vendio merchants would be most excited about the new Enhanced Inventory Sharing feature: When an item is purchased, the inventory quantity automatically adjusts across selling channels. This enable sharing of an item quantity across multiple channels with automatic adjustment of quantities on each channel to minimize the risk of overselling.

"Sellers no longer have to buy more inventory than they need in order to reserve those items for sale on eBay, Amazon or their own store," he said. The new feature will save merchants time. "With enhanced inventory sharing, Vendio sellers effectively triple their exposure by having ALL their items available on ALL their markets ALL the time." The feature will also provide a quantity history-log that will be visible from My Items.

With the fall release, Vendio will offer Discounted USPS postage and integrated label printing powered by DYMO Endicia. Merchants will be able to purchase discounted postage, print labels, insure packages, communicate tracking numbers to buyers, and automatically sync with eBay and Amazon.

And, in a bow to eBay's focus on mobile, the fall release also includes a Mobile Optimized Scrolling Gallery. Hirschman said it was the first scrolling gallery that is automatically optimized to render on mobile phones and hand-held devices and tablets.