GearSource is the preeminent B2B marketplace for buying or selling professional gear. They operate in over 100 countries and serve segments across the live events industry.
GearSource was founded in the early days of the internet using on-premise software. As they grew, they built a custom platform that frequently crashed and required constant maintenance. The team searched for a more stable solution and soon began using a multi-vendor plugin on top of a single-vendor commerce system alongside custom software.
Not long after their launch, the team realized that this single-vendor ecommerce platform was not the reliable foundation for GearSource they were searching for. Every time they added custom code on top of the platform, something else crashed with the system. They experienced slow page load speeds, limited scalability, inaccurate reporting, and difficulty integrating external software systems.
It was clear to the team that they would not be able to grow GearSource on a system designed for single-vendor commerce. They needed a headless marketplace platform purpose-built for the complexities of global marketplace transactions.
GearSource partnered with Nautical Commerce to serve as the solid foundation for their global B2B marketplace. Nautical’s flexible multi-vendor infrastructure enabled GearSource to shift their focus from upkeep and maintenance to building the unique buying and selling experiences that solidifies GearSource’s competitive advantage in the market.
Scaling marketplace operations with Nautical allowed GearSource to:
Nautical's API-first architecture acts as a solid and reliable foundation for GearSource while enabling seamless integrations into external partners. Nautical doesn't limit your potential to innovate on top of our platform.
“The Nautical platform allows us to take our eye off of the transactional deal flow, listings, and the functionality of the website, and focus on the value adds for our clientele. And that's really important to us.” - Marcel Fairbairn, GearSource Founder & CEO
Nautical has increased searchability and shopping speeds for the GearSource platform. Additionally, the GearSource seller dashboard has experienced major improvements as sellers have greater access to the vital information they need.
“An order a couple of weeks ago went from somebody putting a product into a shopping cart to being fully paid with a shipping label on the product in, I think, 42 minutes. It was a record for our company. We’d never had a transaction go from beginning literally to end in a shorter period of time than that.” - Marcel Fairbairn
GearSource does business in 100+ countries. Nautical’s marketplace technology enables them to sell on a global level with offerings like domiciled settlement, multi-currency, and multi-language capabilities.
“We represent all kinds of additional challenges because we are global. There's discussions about how we display currencies? What about language? Do we even talk about language? What about cultural differences? … the team at Nautical that we’re working with are very global thinkers.” - Marcel Fairbairn
Create commerce experiences unique to your business needs
Control the flow of transactions across all sellers from a unified dashboard
Choose the right payment providers for your business and keep track of the money flow
