E-Commerce Marketplace Multiply to Shut Down

We’ve received news from several readers that social network turned e-commerce marketplace Multiply is shutting down.

According to an email sent to Multiply merchants (see below), the site will be online till May 6, and will discontinue all operations on May 31. With further searching, you will find announcements on its Southeast Asia/Philippines and Indonesian sites.

Multiply’s merchants are advised to move to a new e-commerce marketplace. In Indonesia, there’s no shortage of choice of marketplaces, including Tokobagus, Kaskus, and Tokopedia. The news comes as a huge surprise as many would have thought Multiply is growing pretty well.

It was just last year that Multiply said it will discontinue its blog operations, move its headquarters to Jakarta, Indonesia, and move full force into e-commerce. Back then Multiply also revealed that it had 100,000 Indonesian sellers and around 75,000 Filipino sellers.

We’ve contacted Multiply’s country managers in the Philippines and Indonesia and will update if we hear from them. Here’s the letter sent out to merchants today:

Dear Multiply Merchant,

We regret to inform you that Multiply will be closing the marketplace on May 6, 2013 and discontinuing all business operations by May 31, 2013.

Multiply will maintain normal site operations through May 6th and will wind things down through to the end of the month. We will use the rest of May to make sure that all accounts are settled and that you receive all funds you earned on the platform. We hope this provides you time needed to identify and migrate to alternative ecommerce platforms, settle all payments on items bought and delivered, and try to minimize disruption to your business.

In order to ensure that all your earnings are disbursed to you in full prior to May 31, we will cut off buying activity on May 6, 2013. This will ensure that all orders have sufficient time to be completed and delivered to your customers before the end of the month.

If you have a Trust Badge, please contact our customer support team and we will ensure that you receive a pro-rated refund for the remaining time on your subscription.

If my team can be of any assistance to you during this transition, we will do our best to help.