CHRIS: These are opportunities that you probably want to evaluate and think about what the pros and cons are. Just to throw a few cons out there, if we allow the seller to fulfill the shipping directly, there may be scenarios where they're just paying for that and including options, you could get a varying level of service and varying level of support and possibly different levels of insurance coverage or ability to stand behind that shipping.
If one seller uses one shipping provider that just doesn't do a great job, another seller uses a completely different one that's first class. How do you guarantee this governance or this standard opinionated stance within your eCommerce auction platform that guarantees that users are going to be able to trust that there is a certain standard that they're going to get when they're on your auction site?
To me, that's really part and parcel with the niche owners is this idea, subconsciously, that whenever I'm buying on this site, I know who I can trust, I'm going to get X, Y, Z outcome. I know at least this is going to work. I may not get the best price in the world—or maybe I am getting the best price—but I also I know that the shipment is going to arrive and I'm going to be able to use the items, they are not going to be broken or significantly damaged without a resolution.
I'm just curious if you want to talk a little bit, Ron, about some of the pros and cons that you've seen with having these different scenarios, setting up these different scenarios with different shipping providers.
RON: It also depends on where the items are. Let's say you come to us and you have us do an auction site for you, but you do estate sales. Well, a lot of times with an estate sale, they'll bring you all the items. You'll house the items and you might have a brick and mortar and an online. So now all of a sudden, as each of these items sell and they have to be shipped out—if your team is the one packing up and shipping these, could you imagine if you allowed the seller to deal with shipping and you had 27 different shipping companies trying to show up and pick up one of item each. There's no way you could do it, right? So you would have to handle all the logistics, and that would be something in the governance, where the items are being shipped and who handles the logistics.
And that's why Chris mentioned these logistics companies. Sometimes they're called 3PLs, handle all the logistics and shipping, especially when it comes to these intermodal shipping options. And Chris, I think what you're leaning toward is international, right? Because all of a sudden, it's really easy for a bidder to seller to come up and register, go through the verification process.
But then what happens if the bidder that wins is in France? Now I'm not just shipping across the street to you, I'm literally dealing with customs and duties and VAT and GST and intermodal shipping. I'm dealing with 25 other things, and who said how much that's going to cost and does the buyer already know that? And did we tell them, did we have an API?