10 Marketplace Ideas To Disrupt Industries in 2022

The advent of online marketplace ideas have been life-changing for us.

When was the last time you had to flag down a cab? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’d have to say the same. We owe that to a certain marketplace idea- probably an innovative genius disgruntled after having to hitchhike home, that makes it possible for us to book a cab before we even step out into the streets. A couple of years back, this was unthinkable. Now it’s just another Tuesday. 

Online marketplaces aren’t exactly what they sound like, some giant virtual superstore with everyone haggling inside it. They’re smooth, sophisticated innovations that have reached into the real world and changed our lives forever.

It could very well be you changing lives sometime next November. Here’s what you need to know to get started on marketplace ideas.

What is a marketplace?

A marketplace is an e-commerce site that identifies customers looking for certain products and services and matches them with people looking for work or businesses looking for customers. The sheer genius behind marketplace ideas is that the maker has to invest in nothing physical, except the making, marketing and maintenance of the ecommerce platform they are creating.

Tom Goodwin’s famous quote sums this up very well: Uber owns no cars, Facebook creates no content and Airbnb owns no houses. They’ve simply created a space for people to be able to do this, and very successfully, I might add, and enjoyed the huge profit derived from this. 

Uber simply connected people who didn’t want to stumble around looking for cabs with people with cars who wanted an extra stream of income, while Airbnb simply created a higher-profit model for rental properties for people with assets lying around. They solved problems that people didn't even know existed until their marketplace ideas came through, and then we wondered why we ever did it any other way.

What makes a marketplace disruptive?

In simple terms, the only way a online marketplace idea would be disruptive is if it did what has never been done before. How do you go about this? You locate a new source of supply or demand or both and you enable them to meet. But that’s a little vague.

Some markets already exist, but don’t necessarily operate well. Leaving you the make, to turn a half-baked idea into a $1 million venture. 

For example, renting property and booking hotel rooms have been a way of accommodation for a long time now. But there have been several holes in the system, some people may need to rent for a lesser period of time, which leases don’t agree with, property owners have limited income when they have the same tenant especially if you factor in rent control and there are very few budget ways to travel as hotel rooms are expensive and hostels are not very comfortable. Airbnb fixated on a system that left people wanting, and filled all the gaping holes in it.

Harvard business review makes a very good point when it comes to understanding what makes disruptive marketplaces, disruptive. The key lies in connecting non-consumers with non-producers – people with the resources to contribute to the market and build demand and suppliers who cannot do much in traditional market scenarios.

Why starting a marketplace can be huge?

Given that you have a concept that works, and have an established seller and buyer base, a online marketplace can be huge. This is solely because of the unique platform that you will be creating and the profits generated from this. If you are building on an idea that already exists, a marketplace can still be huge because of the additional value that you are creating for the people associated with your platform.

What makes a new idea successful in the marketplace? (And how to ensure success)

There are several factors that determine whether your online marketplace is going to be successful and is meant to be a thriving marketplace. The following are ways to do this:

• Solve a real problem
• Unlock existing assets
• Rebuild fragmented markets

You must be solving a real problem that your users are facing. 

A solution that offers better prices, better quality, more options or more convenience would be the start of building a solid marketplace. It is important to realize the difference between a want and a need in a scenario like this. You could be developing an online marketplace that sounds interesting to people and that might even be something that they want, but developing one that they need because it would solve a real problem for them would guarantee success. A good example of a want but not a need is the sustainable product industry. In theory, everybody wants to do what is sustainable for the planet but it is rarely what guides their actions.

A great marketplace idea would unlock idle assets. 

Locating underutilized resources and hidden customers is known to be the foundation of every successful marketplace.

A good marketplace idea also fixes fragmented markets and improves existing ones by adding a missing component.

This is usually something that works in a scenario where there are a lot of small scale providers of a product or service that do not receive the platform that they need in order to compete with centralized providers. Coming back to the Airbnb example, small sellers with limited capacity for housing are doing a great job competing with bigger hotels in the hospitality industry.

Why should I test my marketplace idea?

If you feel like you’re on to something and have located a gap in the market, it is important to test your online marketplace idea before you launch on a larger scale. Asking friends and family it’s not enough for successful testing, you need to be able to reach a larger target population to do this well.

If you jump right to building your online marketplace without testing it first, you could be throwing a lot of money down the drain. Building a test model of your marketplace for a fraction of the cost of building the whole thing would give you an idea of the kind of response you should be expecting when you launch.

This isn’t the only reason, however. Building a test model would also allow you to work out the kinks in your online marketplace and conduct extensive user research that you can use for your main product. 

You could also get a head start on the marketing of your product by building an email list to keep updating potential customers and also enabling people to join a waiting list for your product.

10 Disruptive marketplace ideas you can use start with today

You can come up with your own ideas if you notice a gap in the market. In the meantime, here are a few marketplace ideas to get you started. 

The following are the different sectors of market places that you can have your pick from. I’d like to divide them into sections before I get into specifics.

E-commerce marketplace

An e-commerce marketplace is probably the one that you are most familiar with. This market mainly deals with buying and selling goods. This is always a lucrative field, as the ecommerce industry is doing better than ever. Global e-commerce sales are at an all-time high.

Talent marketplace

This is also a very popular marketplace. It mainly connects freelancers with companies looking to hire or outsource. Of course, a talent marketplace could deal with any kind of work, as long as there is a service that you can hire people to do.

Rental marketplace

A rental marketplace is a huge improvement to the older system of renting houses and booking hotel rooms. It is a flexible market for tenants and landlords that allows increased connectivity and more convenience for both parties.

Experience marketplace

An experience marketplace is mainly garnered towards travelers and people looking for new adventures. Bungee jumping, sight-seeing, this sector strives to provide tourists with easy access to services they are looking for.

Housekeeping marketplace

This connects home-owners and renters to employees in the hospitality industry. It particular service could range from basic cleaning services to a butler living at your place.

B2B marketplace

This marketplace connects businesses with each other. The most common situation is one where wholesalers and retailers are connected.

Niche marketplace

A niche marketplace is built for people looking for very specific products and services. This could be anything. Etsy is a good example. The marketplace for ideas is never saturated as long as you’re improving the current user experience or solving an unresolved problem.

Online furniture marketplace

The furniture retail and rental industry has existed for quite some time. Most of that time has been spent offline, making this industry inaccessible to some. Specifically, the online furniture rental industry spent quite a lot of time offline before marketplaces built specifically for this purpose made an entry.

The big players in this market are Amazon, Wayfair, IKEA systems, Ashley, Kimball and Furniture Dealer. That in no way means that this market is saturated.

Online shopping for furniture is simple enough, but with young people moving houses, shifting cities – renting is a more suitable option. As far as online marketplace ideas go, building an app that allows users to buy and rent furniture easily from reliable sources that have been vetted will solve this problem.

Although there are apps that do this already, the big guys may not cater to the smaller localities that are harder to ship to. In cases like this, you could build a marketplace that focuses on buyers and sellers in the same locality, which will also enable you to offer shorter delivery times and make shipping furniture more hassle-free for you.

The return and refund policy when it comes to items like large pieces of furniture is definitely harder to implement, so this is also an area that you can choose to tackle.

Online Grocery marketplace

You probably use an online grocery marketplace when things are too busy for you to drop in to the store. Brands are constantly competing with each other – offering faster delivery times, better inventory and a wider range of products.

The biggest challenge in online marketplaces like this one is inventory. Since you’ll be dealing with a large number of perishable goods, the chances of massive operational losses always prevail. 

You would want to stock up on the groceries that people usually order so that you can deliver them faster, but this might just mean that there will be quite some wastage in the process. Balancing your costs and maintaining the customer experience can be quite a task for your management skills.

Liquor and wine marketplace

The US Department of commerce has estimated that consumers spend a whopping $230 billion every year on their Alcohol. That’s a lot of alcohol.

Despite the lure of this high profit industry, there isn’t much competition to speak of. Of course, big players like Amazon and Drizly are forces to be reckoned with. 

The relatively low competition exists because of the higher number of barriers to entry in this industry. In fact, this will pose a huge challenge when you’re building a marketplace in the liquor and wine industry. Specifically, it's licensing and shipping that you need to be worried about. 

There are quite a few licenses that are required for you to be able to ship alcohol, much like the ones required by the bars and restaurants in your city. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

You also need to be wary of falsified information that underage drinkers may provide. Asking for verified ID before customers can even place an order is a good way to ensure that you are not serving liquor to users below 21.

Since some liquor is best served cold, there is a struggle to maintain temperatures while shipping. 

No one wants to be the guy who builds an app that delivers room-temperature beer right in the middle of a party. Trust me. 

Throw in the fragile nature of alcohol bottles, and you have yourself a real problem. 

If that makes this idea sound bleak, it’s not. The high number of problems, if solved, would mean that you have a very successful online marketplace idea for a product that people consume heavily. It's precisely this that makes this model rank at the top, when it comes to great online marketplace ideas.

Online fitness service marketplace

First off, the great thing about this industry is that there is a constant influx of new health trends that you can jump on. Secondly, the pandemic has brought with it the opportunity to make serious progress in the fitness industry online, as a lot of people are now exploring that option instead of attending classes in-person.

As a result, online fitness clubs are the rage right now.

There are two possible models for you here. One, you can provide a online marketplace platform that connects users to fitness clubs in their locality that they can attend in person. Or, you could stream live classes or provide memberships where users can look at recorded premium fitness classes from the comfort of their homes.

There is an additional opportunity here as you can connect with existing fitness clubs that have undergone financial distress due to the consequences of the pandemic.

There are also a number of fitness trends that people are looking into which might not be available to them in the form of classes that they can attend locally. As far as that goes, your market supply could successfully bridge the gap between users looking for niche classes and the clubs that provide them.

Online medical help marketplace

The coronavirus has people concerned about their health, now more than ever. Some of these people may not have the time or the resources available to them locally to pursue proper care of their health.

Again, there are two models that you can pursue here. Your online marketplace idea can provide tele-consulting for the people that do not want to or cannot visit the health care providers in the clinics.

Due to the safety concerns that arise from the coronavirus being highly contagious, it is a good idea for people to keep a distance from health clinics, barring the need for urgent visits.

The second model would be an excellent example of online marketplace ideas where you connect local doctors and hospitals with users that want to schedule an appointment. Using an app to do this is much more convenient than having to call ahead and also helps the suppliers of your platform with managing appointments and recording the same.

Food waste marketplace

One of the best online marketplace ideas 2021, happens to be the food waste marketplace. There is a great deal of food being thrown away by restaurants and supermarkets on a daily basis that has received a lot of public attention during the last few years.

This is an emerging market place, which means that it is nowhere close to saturation and also supports a cause – ergo, something that is very open to public funding.

This marketplace idea works by redirecting individual food wastage as well as the food thrown out by restaurants and supermarkets regularly.

Your platform would connect customers with these restaurants and enable them to purchase unsold food items. This would mean that users would purchase takeout at massively discounted prices while restaurants could dispose of the food that they would’ve just thrown out at the end of the day. Everybody wins.

Babysitting and elderly care marketplace

This is also a booming marketplace idea. In most families, both sides of the family happen to work which leaves the child in the care of a babysitter. While this may be a necessary option, parents have their qualms about leaving their children with strangers.

They can call other parents for references and do their best to vet the babysitters that they choose, but somebody has to always take one for the team and hire someone brand-new.

You could create your own marketplace that connects babysitters looking for work with parents that need their services. This could be just like any other freelancing or task platform, where users can leave reviews and provide honest feedback about the babysitters that they have hired. This would make the vetting process for parents easier, fixing a real concern for many parents today.

Private caregiving marketplaces

This idea is very close to a babysitting marketplace. What I like to add to it, is that elderly people in need of a little additional help can vet and hire the caretakers by themselves – giving them more control over their situation.

Education marketplaces

This is something that has been executed very successfully by Udemy. The target demographic for this market place idea would be students who work and study at the same time, who find it difficult to schedule classes that they can attend in person. Another potential customer would be the professional who is constantly looking to upskill to build their careers.

Virtual learning has opened up a sea of opportunities for people to learn absolutely anything under the sun without leaving the comfort of their homes. You could offer this service directly by connecting students with online courses and teachers that serve their needs or you could connect them with classes that they can attend in-person.

Beauty services marketplace

Another tremendous opportunity for growth is the beauty industry. This could very well be the primary source of income for employees in the beauty industry or a least a very handsome side hassle. For potential customers, this would mean enjoying salon services without having to step out of their homes, enduring waiting times and meeting a bunch of people. Due to the pandemic, there has been a significant rise in this service.

You could provide very basic services or sophisticated ones that can easily compete with fancy salons. To really ensure that your service is a good one – you will need to vet the service providers and make sure that they are trained to compete with other platforms.

How to choose the right marketplace platform

The following are factors we need to look into when choosing the right platform:

• Scalability of the platform
• Whether it suits your needs
• Competitiveness of package offered

Is the platform scalable for your evolving business needs?

The market for your product is going to grow, along with the suppliers and buyers. You need to choose a marketplace platform that will be able to keep up with the growing size of your requirements.

You also need to remember that you will be adding new features and sections to your marketplace as customers will expect more from you as the business grows. There will also be competition to think about. The features you will need in your early days will not be enough.

Building a platform from scratch requires time and money while an existing platform will give you the convenience to start small and upgrade as you move along.

Is the platform suitable for your business model?

The right platform for a business model will look after profit-generating without compromising on the quality that your customers expect from you. Your own marketplace has to earn profit while adding value to the lives of its users.

Is the platform comparable to the other marketplace for platforms in the market?

Making this decision is very similar to when you select an insurance plan for yourself. You need to look at all the products in the market, compare the services that they provide and have a good look at the price points. Look for marketplace platforms that offer a free trial period where you can see things for yourself and decide if you’ve made the right choice or if you need to keep looking.