You should start by going to the potential customers of your service and talking to them.
And understand what they really need and concentrate on the implementation of these functions.
Your direction is highly competitive, you are not the first and not the last, who wants to get into this business.
It will be sad to spend half a year on development, and then understand that they did not do what people need.
So the first is to go to people and talk to them, and most importantly - listen and try to understand what kind of pain they have.
You will find pain - you can create a product that will solve it.
Here I think you will be criticized about the proposed solutions, but the core of your product is not a block, but an ecommerce product.
Therefore, first, I think, we must ask criticism from their side. Also, I can advise you to get acquainted with the methodology of Lean Startup, I think in the case of such a project, it will take place.
Thank you for reading.
I want to say that this is a passed stage already.
Of course, during this time and a lot of shops created, listened to a large number of opinions and wishes. Connected processors price lists, 1C, processed xml from suppliers, etc.
I will say more, it's all passed on personal experience, because there are several of their i-shops.
There have been attempts to agree on direct supplies from France, Belgium (French and English at a good level), but if taken to the staff "purchaser from abroad", this is a big expense. If you want to supply something from abroad, you will have to take a lot that you can not sell yourself for an acceptable period. So it is necessary to develop wholesale and become a supplier.
Go through all the circles of hell with the opening of the bank account, the contract, a large batch, delivery, customs clearance, the sale of the product (buyers, stocks, invest in advertising, etc.)
We solve all these problems, including by using the system token, when there are no payments between the supplier and the purchaser. All payments go only between the platform and one of the parties. If we can open affiliate offices in at least 3-4 countries, then online stores receive a huge choice of grid extension and competitive prices.
I did not see any competitors, there are disparate components, but did not take off.
If you take, as competitors shopify, tradegecko, etc., then it's just designers to create online stores for wholesale or retail. They are not our competitors.
There was an attempt at the Skolkovo project agorab2b (did not take off), but there the vendor has to pay for using the system, then the stores could be switched.
The problems that the project solves are given above in the description and they are not taken from theory, believe me.