DukaMart - Own a customized store in an online multi seller marketplace

Hi there! I'm Beth, creator of DukaMart. I'm extremely stoked to share with the Product Hunt community a digital platform that I've been working for a while. DukaMart is an online multi seller marketplace to help small business owners and entrepreneurs to own a digital store without paying any referral and hidden fees. I used Amazon, eBay and Kijiji before. There were good and bad experiences. For example, out of the blue, I received an email from eBay telling me that some of my listings had been removed and there were no channels to appeal. They were natural products made in the States! Same out-of-control experiences with Amazon as they can suspend sellers' listings with no reason and not to mention their increasingly expensive warehouse and pick-and-pack fees. I always asked myself "How could I give the power back to those who want to own an online store in a multi vendor shopping portal?". I certainly don't want them to experience what I encountered. Fear, worry and out-of-control most of the time. Sales could be great yet Amazon may one day decide to sell exactly the same products. Or our account could be suspended with only one chance to justify our reactivation. Some of my friends ended up with thousands of inventory items as they didn't know that responding with an email asking why was considered to be their appeal email (their one and only chance to enable their selling status). It's that bad. If you're selling on Amazon and/or eBay, you know exactly what I'm talking about here. So I started looking for an alternative earlier this year. I couldn't find one and decided to accept the challenge to create one. Starting with ideas on the wall (with flip charts of course) and signed up for some marketplace app programs such as Joomla. Nailed down to a few shortlisted platforms and reached out to offshore developers for proposals to modify the layout while I would complete the configuration and QA testing etc. Some came back with thousands of dollars and months of development. The most important thing to me is that the platform needs to be self-sustained upon completion, ie fully functional with no dependency on code development. Also added support forums for the community to help each other with minimal supervision from my end. Why? Dealing with developers was roadblock after roadblock. To feel my pain, an initial 8 days delivery schedule became a "forever" waiting game which reached its finish line after one month. To fix a few typos that the developer made in the first place, I waited for two weeks to see them through. To add a location search filter, I received proposals quoting a few months to make this simple customization. I was lucky that I have website development knowledge and did most of the listings and validation myself. Or else DukaMart could stay in an embryo state for years. Sorry that I couldn't resist sharing the pain points which haunted me for the past six months inclusive of burning the midnight oil on setting up and validating the configuration, seller dashboard and PayPal. Now here you go -- enjoy running an online store on DukaMart with 100% control and sleep well at night. DukaMart differs from Amazon, eBay, Shopify and other multi-vendor marketplaces. For example, Control back to the sellers: You have the veto of your store management from A to Z More profitable: No transaction, referral and hidden fees Location search filter: Shoppers can search for sellers in their preferred neighborhood Responsive design: Deliver consistent and seamless experience to multi-device users Seller badge recognition system: Get awarded with a badge upon completion of a milestone Additional bells and whistles Totally Free: ~ Unique seller page ~ Customized collection profile ~ Built-in messaging system ~ Product listings with photo zooming, social share and follow a seller features ~ Plus a lot more https://dukamart.com/dukamart (Seller profile has a unique URL) https://dukamart.com/dukamart/co... (Seller has a collection profile) For those who sign up for a free trial today, I'll upgrade your subscription from 14 days to 90 days. For a free lifetime subscription, you're invited to participate in the referral program (https://resources.dukamart.com/r...). Everyone can win. Note for this release: Free shipping is enabled for all orders, ie sellers will need to include shipping in their pricing. To safeguard complication, shipments to USA and Canada only until we have enough demand to open the platform to other countries. To save myself from the tax-no-tax myth, tax feature is disabled for this release. Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions or ideas! I’ll definitely log them for the future release when I have more resources. Thanks very much for your support 🙏🙏🙏