Selling on Salaaz

What selling on Salaaz is

Three things that matter, in order:

Disclosure-led. Salaaz exists to make the difference between a marketing claim and a verifiable fact visible to shoppers. Every product page carries an ethics score out of 100, broken into four pillars: materials, workers, environment, transparency. The score reflects what you’ve documented. Vendors who can disclose more tend to score higher; vendors who can’t legitimately share certain details get marked as partial disclosure rather than penalized.

Editorial-backed. Salaaz publishes long-form editorial about commerce, materials, workshops, and the people doing this work well. Vendors whose work merits coverage (distinctive craft, transparent supply chains, work worth writing about) get featured in published pieces. Editorial coverage drives shopper traffic, but the editorial control rests with Salaaz, not with vendors. We don’t take payment for coverage of your work in published pieces unless it’s explicitly disclosed as a commissioned editorial on the published article (see How Salaaz Works).

Slow-growth platform. Salaaz is deliberately not optimized for fast volume. We grow more slowly than competitor marketplaces because the brand commitments rule out most of the high-margin tactics those platforms use. If you need volume fast, this is the wrong channel. If you can afford to grow a relationship with a specific audience over months and years, the math works differently.

What we ask of you: the three-stage vetting

Every vendor goes through a three-stage review before they can list a single product. The process exists because the brand promise to shoppers, that what they read on Salaaz is verified, depends on the rigor of vendor vetting. Skipping it would break the trust the platform exists to earn.

See Vendor Guidelines for the operational rules and The Buying Flow for how this connects to what shoppers see on product pages.

The economics

Salaaz charges 10% commission per sale, all-inclusive. That covers transaction fees, listing fees, payment processing, vendor support, hosting, everything. Vendors keep 90% of every sale. No listing fees, no monthly fees during your first year, no premium tier.

Where most marketplaces stack a referral fee, a payment processing fee, and a monthly subscription, Salaaz is one flat number. The full comparison:

The 10%-all-inclusive structure is the simplest fee model in the marketplace category. It’s also the trade that funds Salaaz’s editorial work, vendor support, and platform development. Vendors aren’t the only way the platform makes money. See How Salaaz Works for the full picture, but the commission is the core.

Editorial coverage

Salaaz publishes 2-3 long-form editorial pieces a month. Some of those pieces feature specific vendors, usually vendors whose work shows craft, transparency, or a perspective worth writing about. Editorial coverage of vendors is decided solely by our editorial team, not a paid placement. You can’t buy a feature.

Two paths exist for vendor-featured editorial:

• Earned coverage. The editorial team picks vendors whose work merits a piece, contacts the vendor, reports the story, and publishes with full editorial control. No payment in either direction. This is how most vendor-featured pieces happen.
• Commissioned editorial. A vendor commissions Salaaz editorial to write a feature about their work. The vendor pays Salaaz a brokerage fee. Editorial control stays with Salaaz. We report and write what we find, not what you’d like us to find. The commissioning relationship is disclosed on the published article (“Commissioned by [vendor]. Editorial control by Salaaz.”). This is a separate brand-aligned revenue path, not sponsored content.

A real Salaaz editorial piece is worth more to a vendor than a paid ad on a platform the vendor’s audience doesn’t trust.

The credibility is what we’re selling, to shoppers and to vendors. The editorial-team-controlled review is what protects it.

See Writing for Salaaz for the editorial-contributor side of this pipeline.

What we refuse to do

The honest version. We get asked about these and the answer is no for the same reason: they would compromise the trust that makes Salaaz worth being on.

• No paid placement. No vendor can pay to rank higher in search, appear in editorial articles, or earn an “endorsed” tag on their products. Ranking and editorial reflect what Salaaz finds worth surfacing, not vendor budget.
• No ads anywhere. Not on product pages, not in editorial, not in navigation, not in the newsletter. Vendors can’t buy ad placement because there’s no ad surface to sell.
• No premium vendor tier. Every vendor gets the same surfaces, the same ranking treatment, the same support. There’s no “Pro” tier that buys you visibility.
• No affiliate / influencer programs. We don’t pay creators to push your products. Salaaz discovery is editorial-curated and taste-overlap-driven, not algorithmically pushed via creator partnerships.
• No spam to your customer list. We don’t email your customers with promotions, other vendors’ products, or marketing campaigns. The only emails customers receive from Salaaz are transactional (orders, shipping, support) and the opt-in editorial digest.
• No mandatory subscriptions. Year-one vendors pay zero monthly fees. After year one, optional tiers may exist (analytics, etc.) but no tier will ever be required to maintain your listing.
• No selling of customer data. We don’t sell who bought what, who looked at what, or who follows whom. Deindividualized aggregate signals (e.g., “23 wishlists currently want a small-batch hemp throw under $200”) may surface in the vendor portal as demand signals.

Who this is for

Salaaz is a good fit if:

• You can document where your materials come from and how your products are made
• Your suppliers are willing to be named (or you have a legitimate reason for naming a tier without specifics you can articulate)
• You’re willing to undergo a multi-week vetting process before listing
• Your products will pass independent verification of any specific claims you make
• You can afford a slow-growth channel that builds audience over months rather than weeks
• Editorial credibility matters more to your business than paid-promotion reach

Salaaz is probably not a good fit if:

• You can’t or won’t disclose your supply chain
• You sell mass-produced items from undisclosed factories
• Your business model depends on paid ranking, sponsored placements, or amplified visibility you can pay for
• You need to drive significant volume in the first 90 days
• Your margins assume a marketplace fee under 10% (we won’t go lower)
• You sell categories Salaaz doesn’t cover (digital goods, services, regulated products like firearms or pharmaceuticals)

These are descriptions, not judgments. Different marketplaces exist for different businesses. We’re being honest about which one we are.

How to apply

The path from interested to listed has four steps:

1. Create a vendor account. The vendor portal is separate from the consumer site; you’ll set up a vendor login with your business email. No payment required at signup.
2. Submit disclosure documentation. Materials sourcing, workshop locations, labor practices, supporting photos and any certifications you hold. We’ll send a checklist after account creation so you know exactly what to upload.
3. Vetting (2-6 weeks). Stage 1 typically completes in 2-3 business days. Stages 2 and 3 take longer, depending on the complexity of your supply chain. You’ll get status updates as each stage clears. If something needs follow-up, we’ll write to you with specifics, not a generic rejection.
4. List products and start selling. Once you pass, you can list products through the vendor portal. Each new product undergoes a brief listing review before going live. Your storefront URL becomes indexable; your products appear in shopper search and editorial-coverage candidates.

Start a vendor applicationRead the full vendor guidelines first

A closing note

Salaaz is small. We’ve been at this since 2023. We’re not as big as the marketplaces vendors typically compare us to, and the brand commitments we’ve made rule out the tactics those marketplaces use to grow faster.

The audience that arrives through Salaaz’s slow growth tends to stay, research carefully, and convert on substance rather than urgency. The vendors who join because the editorial credibility matters to them tend to commit.

That’s the trade. Slower growth in exchange for an audience and a platform that don’t reset every quarter.

If you’ve read this far and Salaaz sounds like a fit, the vendor application is at vendor-registration. If you have a question about the program before applying, write to vendor@salaaz.com or use the general contact form.

Either way, thanks for reading carefully. Most marketplaces don’t expect vendors to read this much before applying. We do, because the vendors who read this page end-to-end are the ones the platform is built to work for.