Who can buy: orgs & customers
The public marketplace vs the platform, and the two kinds of buyer — registered organizations and individual customers.
TL;DRAI summary
This chapter explains who can interact with your vehicle listings. While anyone can browse publicly, only registered buyer organizations or individual customers can make offers or buy. This system ensures all transactions are with verified parties.
For: Everyone selling or buying — and anyone wondering who's on the other side of an offer
Cypress inventory is visible to the world but transactable only by known parties. This chapter draws the two lines that matter: public vs signed-in, and organization vs customer.
Public visibility, gated action
The public marketplace (and every public storefront and direct link) is exactly that — public. Anyone with the URL can browse listings, see photos, prices, and condition. What nobody can do logged-out is act: making an offer, using Buy Now, saving a vehicle, or subscribing to a storefront all require an account. The public surface is the shop window; the platform is the counter.
The two kinds of buyer
| Buyer organization | Customer (individual) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who | A registered business — dealer, wholesaler, another fleet | A person buying for themselves |
| Gets in via | Org registration + onboarding review | Self-service sign-up, verified mailbox |
| Can offer / Buy Now | ✅ once the org is active | ✅ |
| Sidebar | Full buyer set — Marketplace, Buyer Hub, Post-Sale | Reduced — Marketplace, Buyer Hub, Your sellers, My details |
| Team | Multiple seats, roles, an admin | Just them |
| Closing paperwork | Business-to-business — org names, entity details | Adapted — the individual is named as the buyer, never dressed up as a company |
| Sees | Marketplace + storefronts + any direct links sent to them | Same |
| Managed by CMs under | Business Orgs | Customers — deliberately a separate registry |
The deal machinery underneath is identical — same offers, same bands, same 6-step closing. What changes is identity and paperwork: a customer's bill of sale names a person, and the platform never presents an individual as an organization.
So who's behind this offer?
Sellers see buyers the way the channel intends: a marketplace offer shows the buying organization; a storefront or direct-link deal shows the buyer the seller invited. Either way, an offer is never anonymous to the people deciding on it — Cypress reviews who's on the platform before they can bid, which is the onboarding gate doing its real job.
Worked example
The Transit's listing was public — anyone could have read every detail from the shop window. Three parties could actually act on it: Birchwood Logistics (a registered buyer org — Dan offered $28,200), a rival wholesaler (org, auto-declined at $25,900), and a retired contractor with a customer account who saved it but never offered. Had the contractor bought it, the closing would have named him personally on the paperwork, asked for his title address in Deal Setup, and run the same six steps.
Under the hood
Customers are organizations with an individual flag — one deal engine, two presentations. Public surfaces render through the same listing queries with visibility rules applied, which is why a hidden vehicle is equally hidden from every unauthenticated angle.