In this conversation, the speakers detail how AptDeco (formerly Zeptaco) has iteratively refined its marketplace pricing model. They describe extensive A/B testing of transaction fees, starting at a flat 15% and expanding to a flexible range of 15%–60% based on seller sensitivity to price points. They also discuss the evolution of delivery fees: initially relying on third‑party moving companies and an Uber‑style model, then shifting to an in‑house delivery operation using a Zipvan and hired drivers sourced from Craigslist. This move was driven by the insight that lower shipping costs boost sell‑through rates and improve customer experience, allowing cost savings to be passed to buyers. The speakers note that cheaper, reliable delivery not only reduces complaints but also creates a willingness to pay for premium service in markets like New York.
you mentioned that pricing earlier, and we've, you know, we've had like entire conversations kind of diving into that and, you know, how marketplaces can use it as a lever.
So. Oh, yes, for sure. Like, even with our like pricing as it comes to transaction fees, for example, and we've played with that a lot, we changed it a lot. We run a lot of experiments like A/B testing experiments to understand like, what are those levers? Like, how do people actually care about like fees, sellers, for example? And, you know, we started, I think, at 15%, and now Like our fee ranges from 15% all the way to 60%, believe it or not. But we saw that, like, you know, we did a lot of— ran a lot of experiments and we saw that, you know, there's certain price points that people don't care about. There's like motivation is different. And so we're able to just make these tweaks over time.
Yeah, I'm sure you not only had the kind of transaction fee there, but also the delivery fee as well. So are there maybe like kind of interesting learnings around that?
Yeah. So the reason why we brought delivery in-house is actually to be able to pass down the cost savings to customers, because what we learned is the cheaper the shipping, the higher the sell-through. And so, you know, when we first launched the company, we actually didn't have delivery in-house. We used moving companies in New York City and kind of optimized within like their free availability. Think of like an Uber type of model. That's what we tried to do. While it worked in the beginning, it's just the quality of service is not there. So anytime they didn't show up or there was an issue, we were still getting blamed as Zeptaco, although we had nothing to do with it. But also the costs were just too high. Like the, The shipping costs for the customer were too high. But out of desperation, one day we— they canceled all our jobs last minute and we had everything scheduled. And so we just hired a— we went and got a Zipvan and found a couple of guys on Craigslist and did delivery that way. And we had people call us, say, wow, this is the best delivery experience ever. That was the aha moment around that, like the beginning time period. And what we then learned is, yeah, we can actually save a lot of money to the cut for the customer by doing it ourselves.
And I can also imagine too that there's probably like a higher willingness to pay for that service, say for instance, in like New York maybe versus kind of other areas, I would imagine.
Yes, it is. And actually, it makes taking products off, taking things off platform harder. We, you know, because this is a big question for, I think, people get a lot of as far as marketplaces, like how do you protect about by taking things from taking things off platform by offering this end-to-end, you know, system and like even when sellers try to take things off platform, buyers are like, well, I don't have a way to deliver it. Appdeco is way cheaper for me than like hiring a man in a van or even like, you know, there's new startups that are doing this like a lug or a dolly. It's not a revenue driver. We do make some margin from it, but that's not the primary way to make, we make money.
