AN ONLINE marketplace which is aiming to take on Amazon will take a major step forward with the launch of a national advertising campaign.

OnBuy has listed 200,000 products and is to receive exposure on ITV and ITV2 from May 29.

The Poole business was devised by former e-commerce consultant Cas Paton and its site went live last November. It claims the lowest commission fees for any major online marketplace in the UK.

It was recently boosted when World of Books – the largest Amazon bookseller in the UK and the fourth largest in Europe – joined the platform. Chalky’s, a major seller of CDs, DVDS and Blu-rays, has also joined up.

Managing director Mr Paton said: “OnBuy’s driving force is to treat sellers fairly, giving them an alternative to the existing platforms, which clobber them with huge selling fees and force them to take lower and lower margins.

“We believe in our model, which is that straightforward, low-cost options for sellers translate into better prices for consumers. It’s a concept that sellers have bought into enthusiastically, and we now have hundreds of sellers signed up offering hundreds of thousands of products at highly competitive prices.”

OnBuy has responded to seller feedback by introducing packages for different kinds of sellers.

Smaller traders can pay a subscription of £19 a month and a selling fee of six per cent, while OnBuy ‘partners’ can pay the same commission but add £89 a month for access to a range of benefits.

Those include an account manager, prominent placement and on-site advertisements. Sellers of many electronics items will pay only three per cent commission.

Mr Paton added: “After our initial launch to sellers, we are now entering the next phase of the journey to becoming a credible alternative to Amazon and eBay.”

He said Ed Sheeran’s CD Divide was selling on the site for £8.99, “a price which we haven’t seen beaten anywhere online”.

The company is developing integration with Linnworks, an e-commerce order management technology, to automate key processes and reduce costs.

It has signed a two-year partnership for hosting and support with cloud services provider UKFast. It says the partnership will prepare it for a surge in traffic and ensure reliability and security.

Mr Paton added: “OnBuy is British born and bred, so we are proud to be partnering with a company that is UK-based and supports the British economy.

“Our supply chain is extremely tight, meaning personal identifiable data stays hosted securely on British soil.”