Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Suchit Bachalli, CEO of Unilog (Part 2)

Suchit Bachalli: If you look at Grainger or Staples, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars in building that ecosystem. That ecosystem is built brick by brick, block by block with a wide variety of software products. Now, let’s look at the SMB space, say someone who has $600 million in revenue. They’re a B2B wholesale distribution company and the type of company you’ve never heard of because their idea of marketing is a barbecue Sunday. These are companies that have $600 million in revenue and 40 locations nationwide. They have city counters where you can buy anything from valves to gaskets to electrical wiring. They sell to other businesses.

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Suchit Bachalli, CEO of Unilog (Part 1)

Suchit has bootstrapped a very interesting e-commerce platform company using services that today caters to the B2B e-commerce needs of backwater industrial customers. It’s a fascinating window in to a world we don’t hear much about.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to Unilog. What do you do? What trends do you align with?

Suchit Bachalli: I’ll start by talking a little bit about the Unilog journey and how we’ve come to be where we are. I think it sets the stage for where we think we’re going. Unilog is a 16-year-old company. For the first 13 years of our life, we were a knowledge process outsourcing outfit out of Bangalore. >>>

Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Is anything else interesting in your story? I find it fascinating. It’s great that you did this from Switzerland. It’s a very interesting angle that you figured out very early on in the history of the Internet. It’s wonderful to see that.

Samy Liechti: I think I have a message to all new and future entrepreneurs. I saw so many very nice detailed business plans. I think the most important thing is to start a business. The second message is it will be hard, but it’s worth it.

Sramana Mitra: You have chosen to bootstrap this company right? Right now, you’re at what level of revenue? >>>

Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: In Switzerland, how do you market for your kind of offering? How much could you grow in Switzerland?

Samy Liechti: In the socks segment, we now have 20% market share. With 20% market share, we can grow up to 30% to 35%, but we will never dominate the whole market. We started about two years ago to invest more marketing money outside our country. It seems to be working.

Sramana Mitra: Now that you’re investing outside of Switzerland, in terms of geographies, where are you putting your marketing dollars? >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Rick Wilson, President of Miva Merchant (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: E-commerce has been a category where a lot of people have bootstrapped businesses to some scale. You talked about your sweet spot being this half a million to million range. A large portion of that is probably bootstrapped businesses right?

Rick Wilson: Absolutely, I would say the vast majority.

Sramana Mitra: What are you hearing from this community? Are these people trying to scale? What is the thought process in your community? >>>

Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. In 2005, you said you had the biggest growth year. What kind of numbers did you do?

Samy Liechti: We had 75% growth. The reason was very simple. We had won an award for customer experience in the US. I remember we had a whole bunch of PR coverage all over the place. We did not have enough people, socks, and time. This brought us to the next level. I think 70% growth in one year is a lot. We had to adopt processes, systems, and so on. That was the biggest growth ever. Usually, we have 20% a year. >>>

Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Were all these customers in Switzerland?

Samy Liechti: We have different currencies and languages here. We were not prepared for payments outside Switzerland. We only had Swiss Francs. All of a sudden, we had our first German customers. Then we started the same for Germany. Little by little, we introduced other currencies and then other payment methods like credit cards. I remember, in the early stage, a Japanese customer wanted to order and we weren’t able to process the credit card. One of his cousins was on a holiday in the Swiss Alps. He still had some cash left, so he sent it in an envelope and we sent him the socks to Japan. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Rick Wilson, President of Miva Merchant (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: If you were to tell us what you’re seeing in your customer base, what are some of the big trends that you’re seeing right now?

Rick Wilson: There are some broad industry trends that are fairly ubiquitous. Most online stores today are becoming multi-channel. They’re going to be selling through their own store, marketplaces, or may very well be selling in the offline world. Roughly a third of our customers have a brick-and-mortar presence. I think the sense of either a pure play e-tailer or not is gone. People understand that e-commerce is a technology that enables streamlining of your business. >>>