Shopster: Go Sell Something

Battling our way through the inevitable carb coma at Angel Forum this afternoon was made a lot easier with a refreshing pitch from Shopster. The premise behind Shopster is deceptively simple: provide a way for anyone to open an online store. Shopster's "retail enablement platform" handles everything you'd normally expect from a turn-key shopping site solution: it handles order management and payment processing, and generally makes it easier for small and medium-sized players to build a full-service e-commerce site. However, unlike those services, Shopster not only provides the e-commerce store technology, it also provides access to a network of suppliers that will provide a retailer with their products they can sell via their Shopster storefront. This is somewhat similar with Amazon.com's aStore offering, with the noted exception that aStore is limited to Amazon.com's own inventory, and has limited customization features. Thus, Shopster's enables customers to create a store, choose products from a wide variety of suppliers, and create a highly-customized store targeted at a specific niche market.