Reverb: marketplace guide

About this guide

This is a ChannelEngine guide on the Chicago-based marketplace Reverb. Here you can find information on how to request a Reverb account, how to configure this marketplace on ChannelEngine, what the specific requirements are, and more.

Table of contents

Commercial information

How to request an account

Associated costs

Marketplace features

Settings and configuration

Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions

• Setup
• Categorization
• Mappings
• Pricing
• Listed products

Additional information

FAQs

Commercial information

Founded	2013
Founder	David S. Kalt
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Area served (orders)	Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, United States
Revenue	USD 35 million
Number of monthly visits	circa 16 million
Website	Reverb
Setup cost	none
Commission	see Associated costs section
Other costs	see Associated costs section
Payment	see the How long does it take to get paid? article on Reverb's website
Product categories	musical instruments
Input language	English
Input currency	USD (default), see Setup section
Tax requirements	Submit a valid sales tax/VAT ID Set up policies to collect sales tax/VAT from buyers in relevant countries
Content creation	yes
Minimum number of SKUs	no
Advertisement options	yes
Profile on ChannelEngine	Reverb

How to request an account

To start selling on Reverb, click the Start selling button on their Seller Hub page to create a merchant account.

Associated costs

Listing an unlimited number of products on Reverb is free, and there are no setup fees for new merchants. However, Reverb applies a 5% selling fee on each item sold, along with a payment processing fee of 3.19% – plus USD 0.49 per transaction. Additionally, if you engage in cross-border shipping (especially for international sales), there might be additional fees to consider. These fees are associated with the complexities of shipping products across borders.

Marketplace features

Supported	Not supported
Product offers (GTIN- and SKU-based offer matching)	HTML formatting
Product content (content matching)	Marketplace fulfillment services
Orders	Multiple stock locations
Cancelations (merchant)	Split orders/order lines
Cancelations (marketplace)	Refurbished products
Returns (merchant)	Sales channels*
Returns (marketplace)	Repricing
Shipments	Pick-up point delivery
Carrier mapping

* A marketplace that supports sales channels allows merchants to list and sell products across multiple markets (e.g.: countries, regions, and states), all from the same connection. Reverb does not support sales channels, but products can be shipped worldwide. 

Settings and configuration

Setting up each marketplace on ChannelEngine follows the same flow, though not every marketplace includes the steps listed below.

1. Go through the Setup.
2. Create a Product selection.
3. Complete the Categorization.
4. Set up the Mappings: content, offers, and carriers.
5. Configure the Pricing: rules and currency conversion.
6. Finish the Activation.
7. Check the Listed products overview.

Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions

Setup

On Reverb
 

To retrieve the required API access token: 

1. Log in to the Reverb back-end. From the user menu, click My profile, API & integrations.
2. Click Generate new token and enter a name for the connection. E.g.: ChannelEngine.
3. Select all of the available scopes to allow ChannelEngine the correct access levels, then click Generate token.  
4. Once created, your token appears in the Personal access tokens section.

On ChannelEngine

On the Setup page of your Reverb marketplace, add the token to the API access token field. API tokens for Reverb do not expire, so you do not need to refresh the token at a later date. 

Under the Plugin-specific settings section, go through the following options:

• Send buyer notification after shipment export - this option is enabled by default, and automatically sends notification emails to your buyers as soon as a Reverb shipment is confirmed on ChannelEngine. 
• Currency - if you are a non-US merchant, enter the currency code you want ChannelEngine to use to export product offers into this field. For US-based merchants, USD is automatically pre-selected as your store currency and cannot be changed. A list of supported currency codes can be found on the What currencies can I use? page in Reverb's help center. This value should exactly match the currency code you have configured in the Reverb back-end via Shop policies, Shop currency. E.g.: if your Reverb shop currency is EUR, enter EUR into the Currency field on ChannelEngine. If no value is entered, the default currency (USD) is used. 

Sandbox environment

You can connect ChannelEngine with the Reverb sandbox environment for testing purposes.

1. In the Advanced settings section, toggle the option to Use sandbox. 
2. A new access token is required to access the sandbox environment. Create an account via the Sandbox sign-up page, and generate an access token as described above.
3. Add the access token to the relevant field on ChannelEngine and click Save. You can create any number of test accounts via the sandbox UI to simulate buyers, orders, etc. More information on testing can be found on the Testing on sandbox page in Reverb's API documentation.

Categorization

Categorization on Reverb is straightforward. All categories are listed in English, and there are no category-specific attributes. 

Mappings

If you are new to Reverb, it is recommended that you configure your store policy and shipping profiles on Reverb before completing content mappings. 

Content

All products (required)

• Brand - the product's brand. E.g.: Fender. 
• Description - the long description of the product, listing key selling points and features. Should include any additional information relevant to the buyer, such as ownership and modification history, playability specifications, cosmetic condition, and anything included in the purchase. E.g.: power supplies, accessories, etc. May not include links or references to other selling venues, external listings, websites, or selling channels. Also, you should not include advertisement banners or store policies in the description. 
• Image 1 URL - the main product image. Images can be updated, replaced, re-ordered (in the case of multiple images), and deleted at any time. The image requirements are: 
  
  • Resolution - at least 620x620 px, but higher resolutions are recommended.
  • Shape - square.
  • File format - all formats are accepted.
  • Use original photos for pre-owned items.
  • Screenshots, stock photos (unless a registered seller), and photos from other websites are not allowed.
• Model - the product's manufacturer model number or model name. E.g.: 9190117506, TS808 Tube Screamer, etc. 
• Shipping profile - refers to the predefined shipping profiles that you can configure in the Reverb back-end via your seller profile. Shipping profiles allow you to assign specific rates to a category or range of products. This is a free input text field that you can use to enter the name of the shipping profile you want to map to a product. This value should match the exact name of the profile on Reverb – it is therefore advised that you copy and paste shipping profile names from Reverb to ChannelEngine to avoid potential mismatches. E.g.: 'Free - standard shipping', '$15 - standard shipping', etc. More information on how to create shipping profiles can be found in the article What are shipping profiles? in Reverb's help center.
  
  NB: it is not possible to create or modify shipping profiles via ChannelEngine's Merchant API. Creating and managing shipping profiles can only be done via your Seller profile on Reverb. You can only map shipping profiles to listings when the profiles have first been created on Reverb. 
• Title - the product name, model, and size – if applicable. E.g.: Fender Baja Blue T-Shirt - Large. 

All products (optional)

• Export content - determine the export content strategy for existing products on Reverb. If set to No, only the product's description gets exported. If set to Yes, the entire product content is updated during export.
• Finish - the product's finish, in terms of color or material. Reverb uses an algorithm that automatically matches the values you map to finish with a similar value from their own database. The finish is also shown in product titles to improve discoverability. E.g.: Cherry, Oak, etc.  
• Handmade - indicate whether the product is handmade. E.g.: true, false. 
• Image 2-8 URL - additional image URLs. See the image requirements listed for Image 1.
• Video link - a URL pointing to a product video on YouTube. 
• Year - the year(s) during which the product or model was manufactured. This is a flexible attribute that supports year ranges and/or exact years. E.g.: 1979-1981, 1971, mid-80s. 

Offer

Reverb supports offer matching based on a combination of the product's GTIN, SKU, and UPS (wattage). If a match is found, the item Price is automatically updated. You must first complete product categorization and all required content mappings before ChannelEngine can match offers.  

Required

• Condition - indicate the product's condition by selecting from a range of fixed values. E.g.: brand new, excellent, fair, good, mint, non-functioning, poor, and very good. 
• Price - the price of the product in the currency selected during setup. This can include or exclude sales tax, based on your Reverb store's settings. Using more than two decimals is not recommended, as Reverb may interpret is as thousands – even if the decimals are separated by a dot.

Optional

• Pre-order lead time - the amount of time required to ship the pre-ordered product (e.g.: 2). If this attribute is mapped, Pre-order ship date cannot be mapped.
• Pre-order lead time unit - the unit of time that applies to the value mapped to the Pre-order lead time attribute. E.g.: days.
• Pre-order ship date - the date when the pre-ordered product can be shipped (e.g.: 2030-12-31). If this attribute is mapped, Pre-order lead time cannot be mapped.

Carrier

Carrier mapping is not mandatory on Reverb, but it is required to send a tracking code for every order after the shipment is confirmed on ChannelEngine. Reverb does not release payments to merchants for orders without a tracking code, unless the buyer confirms that the order is received via the Reverb UI. 

Pricing

Listings must have a minimum price of USD 1.50. Listings beneath this price cannot be published. Reverb applies sales tax on product sales based on location. More information on how sales tax is handled can be found in the article Sales tax rules in the Reverb help center.

Listed products

If you have problems with products not appearing on Reverb, check the Listed products section for more information.

Additional information

Orders

ChannelEngine imports orders and reserves the stock when they have the status Awaiting payment and Awaiting shipment. In the majority of cases, only paid orders are imported – as buyers cannot place an order without first completing payment.

Shipments

Reverb does not support separate shipping and invoice addresses, therefore, ChannelEngine uses the buyer's shipping address as the invoice address on orders. Additionally, there is no support for split orders, back orders, or split order lines via Reverb due to the way quantities of the same product are handled on orders. 

Cancelations

Buyers cannot place an order without first paying for the product on Reverb, therefore there is no cancelation process in place for orders pending payment. Buyers must contact a merchant directly via the marketplace to request a cancelation, in which case the merchant can create the cancelation on the buyer's behalf. 

Merchant-requested cancelations are handled by ChannelEngine as refunds. To create a cancelation on Reverb, you must first create it on ChannelEngine via the usual method (see the article ChannelEngine: cancelations). This triggers a request to Reverb for all order costs to be refunded to the customer.

Returns

In the case of returns, both partial refunds and full refunds (i.e.: product value plus shipping costs) can be processed. 

Via Advanced settings on the Setup page on ChannelEngine, you can disable the option Include shipping costs for approved returns. This option is enabled by default. When disabled, only the value of the product excluding shipping costs is refunded in the event of a merchant-created return. This does not apply to cancelations, as unshipped products must always be refunded with the shipping costs included. 

FAQs

How often does each task run on Reverb?

Tasks run according to the following schedule on Reverb:

Does Reverb support product variations/parent-child relationships?

There is no support for product variations on Reverb. 

Can I relist or delete product listings?

You cannot remove a published listing from your Reverb account. Listings can be ended, but they remain archived in the account history. Listings with the 'used' condition do not hold stock – once a used product is purchased (i.e.: has the status Ordered), they cannot be relisted. This is important to bear in mind when assigning SKUs to products. More information on relisting products can be found in the article How do I relist my item after it sells? in the Reverb help center.

To remove a product listing, update its status on ChannelEngine to unpublish it on Reverb. Similarly, updating the status triggers ChannelEngine to republish listings that have ended. Product listings that are removed from the selection have the status 'ended'. 

Can I create draft listings?

ChannelEngine directly publishes product listings, but it is possible to create drafts by assigning the Draft status to new listings. To create test listings, it is advised to use the Reverb sandbox. Creating a draft in the sandbox requires the sandbox.reverb.com/api endpoint. More information on this can be found on the Create listings page in Reverb's API documentation.