B-Stock’s Network Effect Drives Exponential Sales

“Build it, and he will come,” says Kevin Costner in the movie Field of Dreams. And what goes for corn fields and baseball goes for online marketplaces and returned and excess inventory. Case in point: it started with one major retailer partnering with B-Stock on an online marketplace to start building a large buyer base for used and trade-in phones. GameStop opened its branded auction marketplace for trade-in cell phones in 2013 and very quickly increased its buyer base by 1700%. From there, the addition of new mobile marketplaces steadily multiplied the number of new buyers, repeat buyers, and even created power buyers in the category. Power buyers often purchase across dozens of marketplaces and will spend millions of dollars a year on used, returned, and trade-in inventory.

This multiplying of buyers every time a new marketplace opens is known as the network effect. Here’s how it works: Each orange dot is a marketplace, in this case both retailers had their own buyer base. At some point, the network effect kicked in and they began to share many of the same buyers.  

Emergence of Power Buyers

Here you can see power buyers beginning to emerge. Power buyers are identified by a thick, bold line; the thicker the line, the more transactions they completed. A couple of power buyers are exclusive to a single marketplace, buying only from that one source, as shown by the blue dot.

Exponential Growth

As each new retailer marketplace joins the network, the buyer ecosystem grows.

Ongoing Success

By joining the B-Stock marketplace network, companies selling overstock, returned, and trade-in quality phones have access to a global buyer base for secondary market mobile devices.

And it’s not just limited to our mobile clients. The network effect works similarly across all categories: apparel, appliances, home + garden, consumer packaged goods, etc. If you’ve got returned or excess inventory to sell, we’ve got a buyer network for it.

To learn more on how our marketplace solution works, contact us today to schedule a demo.