Ask HN: How does fancy.com make money?

5 points

12 years ago

Manage operations for a fashion brand, recently we were contacted by an Andrew Tuch (EVP of Operations @fancy) to help him out with an order/exchange he had placed. The order was filled out processed as a personal order for Mr. Tuch himself. Our product was returned to us marked up with Fancy.com packaging and barcodes. This is interesting since we do not sell wholesale to Fancy.

After a quick look at their site, I was able to find the product for sale. Same price, no markup. Difference in shipping costs were negligible.

Reached out to Andrew to let him know if he was interested in wholesale I would be happy to discuss the particulars. After this conversation the product link was updated to remove the ability to "checkout" with our product.

According to their wikipedia page, "In return for selling other merchants’ products, Fancy takes a 10% cut of every purchase that is made through the website."

Fancy purchases our product at the going rate, charging their consumer the same amount. Where are they collecting/pulling that 10% cut from... Dorsey & Hughes? Is this a standard business practice to resell online vendors goods without gaining consent from them to list? At least someone like http://www.farfetch.com/ puts a premium on their pricing.

Similar account noted here: https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/10441928/

Screen shot of our product in their cart after they have removed the ability to "add to cart" http://imgur.com/GfVkEL4

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