GUIDE  ·  10-Minute Read

How to Build a Multi-Vendor Marketplace

A multi-vendor marketplace is software that lets many sellers offer goods or services to customers on one platform, with the operator owning onboarding, the order or booking record, and how money moves. It is not a single-store checkout with extra logos. Sigi Technologies has shipped both shapes: Kwik eMart, a multi-retailer grocery marketplace for Glenshire Group in Scotland, and ServiPR, a bilingual services marketplace for Puerto Rico with customer and provider apps.

kwikemart.co.uk homepage screenshot: first-order delivery banner, live order tracking card, and 15-minute delivery tiles

A multi-vendor marketplace connects customers with more than one seller and keeps one shared record of the job — an order, a booking, or both. Catalog, status, and payouts are platform features, not one-off screens for the first tenant. Sigi’s grocery proof is Kwik eMart; the services proof is ServiPR. Commercial marketplace work is listed on the e-commerce industry page.

Goods marketplace versus services marketplace

The architecture rhymes. The objects differ. A grocery marketplace moves SKUs, substitutions, pick-and-pack, and last-mile proof of delivery. A services marketplace moves duration-priced bookings, staff assignment, and payouts to each business’s own account. Treat those as two products that share an onboarding and money pattern — do not force a salon booking into a shopping-cart schema.

Kwik eMart: multi-retailer grocery from day one

Glenshire Group asked Sigi for a mobile-first grocery platform that could take Greens convenience stores from counter and phone orders to express delivery. The build split into four surfaces over one Laravel (PHP 8.3) backend: a React Native customer app, a retailer dashboard, a driver app, and an admin panel. The public site, partner sign-up, and partner sign-in are Blade and Livewire on a single Apache Linux VPS.

  • One order state machine — Order Confirmed, Shopper Picking, Delivery En Route — visible to customer, store, driver, and admin.
  • Multi-retailer from the first release: onboarding, per-store zones, and commission payouts as platform features. Greens stores were the first tenants, not the only possible ones.
  • Self-serve partner onboarding in five steps, with OpenStreetMap lookup so a new store can be placed without a paid Google Maps key.
  • Stripe for card and wallet payments; push, SMS, and email to keep shoppers and drivers in sync; photo proof of delivery on contactless drops.

Kwik eMart’s published partner offer (on the retailer sign-up page) is 10% commission per delivered order, no setup fee, weekly bank payouts, application review within one business day, and go-live usually within 24 hours. The live platform’s own site states more than 500 partner stores, over a million delivered orders, and a 4.9 out of 5 rating. Those are the product’s published figures, not invented Sigi metrics.

ServiPR: two apps, Stripe-connected providers

ServiPR Ltd. needed more than a directory for Puerto Rico. Sigi designed and built a customer app, a provider app, and a web admin panel. Both mobile apps ship from one codebase to iOS and Android and are published under the com.sigitechnologies package namespace; store listings are on the client’s developer accounts. The marketing site is Next.js at serviprapp.com.

  • Bookings against services with provider-set durations and prices, assignable to a specific team member so a salon and a solo tradesperson share one model.
  • Card and Apple Pay in, provider payouts out, through Stripe. Each business links its own Stripe account inside the provider app, so ServiPR does not hold provider funds in a ledger of its own.
  • English/Spanish throughout both apps, with in-app chat (text, voice notes, images, location).
  • Admin visibility of onboarding, categories, cities, bookings, disputes, and the transaction trail.

The customer app’s 1.0 reached the App Store on 24 March 2026; the provider app followed on 2 April. Sigi handled store submission and post-launch releases for both apps on both platforms. The case study records those dates; it does not invent booking volumes.

Decisions to lock before engineering

  1. What the shared record is: a grocery order with pick states, or a booking with a calendar slot. Do not mix those objects without an explicit model.
  2. Who the first tenants are versus what the platform must allow later. Kwik eMart modeled Greens as tenant zero on a multi-retailer system.
  3. How money moves. ServiPR uses per-provider Stripe accounts. Kwik eMart uses Stripe at checkout plus commission payouts to retailers. Write that flow down before screens.
  4. Which surfaces ship together. A marketplace that launches only the customer app without vendor tools usually dies in WhatsApp.

Related Sigi reading

Read the Kwik eMart grocery platform case study and the ServiPR services marketplace case study. A doorstep vertical that is still a marketplace is how to build an on-demand laundry app. Storage and fulfillment software is a different product: how to build a warehouse management system. To talk commercial scope, use e-commerce software development.

Questions this guide answers

Software that lets many sellers offer goods or services to customers on one platform, with shared onboarding, one order or booking record, and a defined payout path. It is not a single-store shop with extra vendor logos.

Kwik eMart is a multi-retailer grocery marketplace (Laravel plus React Native customer and driver apps). ServiPR is a bilingual services marketplace for Puerto Rico (customer app, provider app, Next.js site, Stripe-connected payouts). Both are published case studies.

They can share onboarding and payments patterns. They should not share one cart object. Grocery needs pick-and-pack and substitutions; services need duration-priced slots and staff assignment.

On ServiPR, each provider links their own Stripe account so the operator does not hold provider funds. On Kwik eMart, Stripe takes customer payment and the platform pays retailers on a published commission model. Pick one money design and test it end to end before launch.