Why I built Sznmart

The thing that didn't add up

Every indie seller I knew was paying 10–15% of every sale to a marketplace that gave them one button: “Buy now.” That works for commodity goods with deep stock. It is exactly wrong for a soap maker with eleven bars of a seasonal batch, a camera restorer with one Pentax on the bench, or a roaster whose winter blend doesn’t exist in July.

Slow-moving inventory needs negotiation. One-of-a-kind items want an auction. Next season’s batch deserves a pre-order with a deposit, not a “sold out” page. The tools didn’t exist in one place — so sellers stitched together four platforms and lost margin on all of them.

What I tried first

The first version was just a deal board — sellers posted slow movers, buyers named a price over email. It was clunky, and it worked anyway. Offer acceptance ran high because both sides finally had a way to meet in the middle. That little experiment became Name Your Price, and the rest of the lanes (Bid Zone, Drop Zone, pre-orders, crowdfunding) grew out of the same question: what does this kind of inventory actually want?

The rule that drives everything

Sellers keep their margin. Sznmart charges 0% commission and makes money on optional plans and tools — never by skimming the sale. The moment a marketplace earns more when sellers earn less, the incentives rot. We refuse that trade.

What I screwed up early

Plenty. The first auction timer had a soft-close bug a bidder found in week two. The seasonal homepage shipped before the seasonal catalog did, so spring shoppers saw three products. And I underestimated how much sellers wanted help with words, not just tools — which is why AI Studio exists for listing copy and campaigns.

What's true about the team

We are small on purpose. Everyone who builds Sznmart talks to sellers weekly, and most of the roadmap comes straight from those calls. The build log is public — the changelog is the honest version of our progress, including the fixes.