It may seem like the world of e-commerce is an increasingly mature space but it is still surprisingly segmented.

Almost every marketplace, from Amazon to EBay, has its own listings policies and proprietary formats making the life of an independent online retailer a complicated one.

Stepping into the breach are sites like SellerExpress which provide centralised platforms from which online retailers can manage their listings, and stock levels, across numerous marketplaces – in this instance Play.com and the various Amazon marketplaces.

A single dashboard allows for bulk uploads across multiple sites and rapid data entry based on product barcode or ISBN numbers. The site also allows retailers to ‘auto reprice’ ensuring that they maintain the highest possible margins while still shifting their stock.

It’s probably not the sexiest industry to play in but where there’s customer pain, there’s potential profits.

Site: www.sellerexpress.com

Everything comes with a story attached these days – often catering directly to consumers’ quest for authenticity and often in a simple attempt to differentiate one product from the rest.

Increasingly technology is playing its role too. Launched to coincide with Manchester’s Future of Everything festival, the RememberMe project uses RFID tags and QR codes to embed stories about clothes donated to Oxfam.

The project is a collaboration between Oxfam and Totem, who also produce an iPhone app that allows consumers to tag their own items and save video, audio or text ‘histories’ of these objects using printable QR codes.

This idea is also leading to other creative uses with one estate agent using QR codes to let potential buyers ‘see’ inside a house via their phones.

An estate agent in Didsbury, Manchester is using tales of things to creatively market its properties. Gascgoigne Halman has placed QR codes/barcodes on its properties to allow buyers to see inside the property without actually having to set foot in the house before making the commitment to view.

An opportunity for some creative thinking perhaps?

So Google have unveiled their App Inventor, which allows users to create Android-based mobile apps using a simple drag and drop interface.

“To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.”

When this same kind of idea was applied to online publishing we ended up with tens of millions of blogs and a new industry. When it was applied to web design we got businesses like  SquareSpace. Audio recording: podcasts. Low cost video cameras and simple eidting software: YouTube. Print-on-demand:  Blurb, Lulu and Newpaper Club.

Whenever you take something that used to required technical skill or access to expensive equipment and make it accessible to the masses, the masses seem to grab hold of it and run – creating all kinds of weird and wonderful things in the process.

App Inventor is the first big step in doing exactly this for the mobile app market (there are other DIY app tools out there but nothing with this kind of clout behind it). Expect to see two things happen:

• Individuals creating simplified, personalised apps to help solve their own daily needs or just for fun – some will break out and become hits
• New structures, like marketplaces for DIY apps, to grow up around them
• Hyper-local apps, which previously wouldn’t justify the cost of creating them, will become more common

Of course, this is really just a first tentative step and there’s a lot of ground yet to cover.

App builders will need to become even simpler and probably cross-platform. Apple will no doubt have something in the works too but the next big thing in this space may be a well-branded, well-back startup – something like a SquareSpace or possibly even an Open Source option, a WordPress for apps.

Whatever the format and whatever the timescale, it’s hard to imagine that DIY apps won’t become much more common – and that inevitably means new opportunities for creative entrepreneurs.