Customers you keep, not rent.
Flat fee, your Stripe account, your customer list — not renting buyers from a marketplace.
Renting demand forever is a strategy with no end state.
Concentration on a marketplace means its fees, visibility, and policies are set by someone else and can change without your input.
And the asset you are building — collectors who trust you — accrues to the platform rather than to your business.
- A percentage taken on every sale to the same repeat buyer
- No way to contact customers you have already served
- Price competition on identical items as the only lever
- Business value tied to an account you do not own
What owning the channel gives you
The mechanics that make direct worth building.
Your own storefront
Branded pages — home, story, events, policies, custom pages — running on inventory you already manage.
A flat fee
$0 seller fee — you keep your listed price, rather than a percentage that grows with the card. Your buyer covers the 3.25% + $0.40 checkout fee by default.
Money to your account
Item value, shipping, and tax settle to your own Stripe Connect account as a destination charge.
Customer ownership
Customer profiles, buyer history, and analytics on the plans that include them.
Recommend directly
Use watchlist interest and purchase history to put an item in front of the collector who wants it.
Custom domain
Your store runs on your own domain, included with the plan rather than sold as an upsell.
Building the direct channel
Alongside the marketplaces, not instead of them.
Stand up the storefront
Branded and stocked from existing inventory. The technical part is the easy part.
Point your existing customers at it
Show buyers, counter customers, and your following. This is where early direct traffic actually comes from.
Move the right inventory there
Higher-value items benefit most from the flat fee. Use the net readout to find your own crossover point.
Use what you learn about buyers
Watchlists and purchase history turn fresh intake into a sale before it is ever listed.
Questions people ask
Should I stop selling on marketplaces?
Run both. Marketplaces and auction houses are how new collectors find you; your storefront is how you keep the ones who already did. One inventory is what makes running both cost almost nothing.
Where is the crossover between storefront and marketplace?
Your own channels keep your listed price outright, while the marketplace charges 5%–9%. What the marketplace buys you is demand and fulfillment. The fee calculator will run it on your numbers.
How do I get traffic to my own store?
Your show and counter buyers, your following, and search on individual item pages — plus every marketplace and auction sale that introduces someone new to your name. The customer list compounds from there.
Can I email my customers?
Yes — customer management, buyer history, and analytics come with your storefront from Business, and you can recommend items straight to a collector from their watchlist and purchase history. A Mailchimp connection for campaign automation is in development.
Build the asset that stays yours.
A customer list is the only part of a card business that compounds without more inventory.