Year in Review

All of us at MarketTime wish you and yours a safe and healthy holiday season. 

As 2022 draws to a close, let’s reflect on 2022 and look toward the future.

Reflection & 2022 Highlights

This year has been an exciting one for MarketTime. 

We’ve built a fully integrated and cross-functional team across the globe while determining best-of-breed features from Brandwise and MarketTime. Our team has expanded and standardized our suite of reporting and analytics tools and tackled the vital task of implementing a universal credit card tokenization platform.

I’m proud to share a few highlights:

• Through Tableau, we’ve standardized our suite of reporting and analytics tools by integrating the most popular reports from MarketTime and Brandwise into one accessible platform accessible to all our stakeholders.
• We’ve leveraged the best features and functions of Brandwise Stream and MarketTime Order Delivery to allow orders from both systems to be received by brands on one unified dashboard.
• The expansion of our universal credit card tokenization platform, powered by Hosted PCI, now supports over 80 standard credit card gateways.
• With the launch of mtPay, the overall cash flow for retailers and brands will improve. Brands will spend less time chasing payments while offering payment method flexibility and instant access to net terms. Sales agencies can expand their customer base by offering both brands and retailers this competitive feature.
• The launch of mtPlay (previously Play for iPad) into the Apple App store positions mtPlay as the primary mobile application in our targeted best-of-breed solution and will include many frequently used features from the MarketTime mobile application. 

You can find weekly product updates and code releases on our support page HERE.

We are pleased that the industry has recognized our ongoing commitment to increasing our market share of both brands and sales agencies. The MarketTime team, comprised of professionals from within and outside of the industry, delivers customer success and growth to brands, sales agencies, and retailers through the inclusion and focus on sales professionals and the tools they need. These tools are designed for multi-channel buying and selling, providing digital convenience while leveraging the human factor, critical to our collective success.  

Trends

From toys to housewares, apparel to gifts, and everything in between here are a few categories we saw trending in 2022 across the MarketTime ecosystem.

State of the Industry

Many have asked our opinion on the state of the industry, and we’re pleased to report that despite the reported general slowdown in consumer spending, wholesale sales in our industry have continued to increase. According to the National Retail Federation, Q3 2022 experienced annualized growth of 2.6% in GDP, retail sales in the first 10 months were up 7.5% YOY, and projections indicate that November and December holiday sales will grow between 6% and 8% over 2021. 

Overseas production issues, inventory instability, and shipping disruptions have lessened, and B2B sales and retailer product levels have begun to normalize – all great signs for 2023 and the upcoming winter markets.

In 2021 and 2022, the MarketTime ecosystem has seen growth across all verticals, and we expect this trend to continue into 2023. Shopify and Faire both reported similar growth patterns year over year.

A Look to the Future

In 2023, MarketTime will continue our ongoing discussions with all stakeholders to understand their needs and prioritize the transition of these features and functions into an integrated platform. We will identify all critical features in the current Brandwise Play back-office, Reward, Reach B2B, Transit, Passport, and e.brandwise functionality. This exciting move will allow our stakeholders to leverage a single sign-on to manage administration, commissions, catalogs, order delivery, and integrations in a cloud-based architecture secured and scaled by AWS (Amazon Web Services). Additionally, we will continue developing robust and intuitive analytics with Tableau for all customers.

In parallel, our strategic leadership team is laying the foundation to greatly expand our value. First by creating partnerships with various industry-leading service providers and enabling an ever-growing list of integrations with services you use every day. And second, by preparing an exciting roster of new features, innovations, and programs to strengthen your business and drive new opportunities.

The process of integrating two companies and systems is complex, and we appreciate your patience. We are committed to transparency and will keep you updated as we progress. We thank you for your continued trust and partnership.

Once again, from our family to yours, Happy Holidays and best wishes for the new year. We look forward to helping you grow in 2023 and many years to come.

Chris Happ

CEO, MarketTime