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. >>>

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? >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Rick Wilson, President of Miva Merchant (Part 6)

Rick Wilson: The trend we see there is that they want to go direct. They want to build a community around their product. I think Kickstarter has really brought that down even from the million dollar plus range to the zero dollar plus range where you can do a product video, get a personality out there, and build a community. Once you build a community, you have enough momentum to go figure out the logistics. If you’re selling a single SKU, outsourcing fulfillment is easy. If you’re selling jewelry and you have 5,000 SKUs, it gets a little more challenging. Even all of those problems are now solvable by one to five person teams, which was impossible a decade ago.

Sramana Mitra: I would say e-commerce is probably the domain that is seeing the maximum impact of ultra-light startups. Would you agree with that? >>>

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. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Rick Wilson, President of Miva Merchant (Part 4)

Rick Wilson: On one hand, you have this free-wheeling, open source world where as long as someone knows what they’re doing, they can literally do anything. On the other hand, you have what I call apple-ification where all of the hard choices have been made for you. There’s some brilliance to that for sure. The successes of Shopify, Bigcommerce, and Volution have shown that there’s a demand for that. I would say that’s the biggest change in the last seven years. Today, to be an e-commerce owner, you don’t have to be a particularly technical person whereas in 2007, you needed to be somewhat technical. If you go back farther than that, you absolutely had to be technical to have an advantage.

Sramana Mitra: That’s correct. Shopify and Volution are catering to the more starting merchants. Bigcommerce is catering to the slightly larger sweet spot of $1 million to $30 million revenue. Magento is the larger player. Where do you fit into that picture? >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Rick Wilson, President of Miva Merchant (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In 2007, what was the landscape in the e-commerce shopping cart or the e-commerce platform world? What was going on around you? What was the competitive landscape? Whom did you compete with directly and indirectly?

Rick Wilson: Yahoo stores was still a popular platform. I wouldn’t say that it had momentum, but it was certainly popular. The osCommerce software, which had been very popular, had faltered. I was never a big osCommerce guy, so I can’t remember if they released version three or four. They were in between major versions and it just died on the vine. They never got the major version out. I think Magento’s alpha was announced during that time. Shopify was just starting to arrive on the scene. I heard about them in 2008. Volution was probably the earliest success story as a pure play Software as a Service platform provider in our space. >>>

Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 1)

Samy Liechti has built up a very nice subscription e-commerce business from Switzerland selling socks, underwear, and shorts. The company is 100% bootstrapped.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Samy Liechti: I’m Swiss and grew up in Switzerland. I went to one of the finest European business schools. I studied Business and Economics in Switzerland, Paris, and Toronto. After graduating, I worked in marketing and communications before I opened up my own company. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Jacob Cooke, CEO of Web Presence in China (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: That is also the beginning of the rise of more fragmented industries right? Let’s say that these larger brands that are operating on Tmall start to be able to track customers and build a trusted relationship with the consumer. Let’s say the first time the transaction happens on Tmall, the user is starting to get familiar with the brand. Then I imagine they would start feeling comfortable buying from that brand off Tmall.

Jacob Cooke: Yes, that depends. Every company that we deal with has different channel strategies and channel partners, but that’s true. It could work vice versa. >>>