Mike Parker is co-founder of Buyaparcel.com, an online retailer of giftware, plumbing and heating supplies, tools, lighting and bathroom accessories. Here he talks about the early days of the dotcom boom, why the law is an ass even online and how eBay helped add £2 million to his bottom line.
What’s the history of BuyaParcel.com?
As an independent IT consultant back in the 1990′s, I had the pleasure of working with plumbing and heating supplier, Godfreys of Lowestoft. I ended up becoming the company’s IT manager and my first task was to update and stabilise the hardware store’s IT systems.
Once this was completed in 2003, the owner of Godfreys and I, along with another member of the Godfreys management team, decided it was time to venture online and launch the website, Godfreysonline.com, which became a separate business and changed its name to Buyaparcel.com in 2006.
What was the spark that made you launch the shop?
In the late 90’s, many businesses were looking at the potential of the internet to expand their market offerings. The ability to reach a wider audience made going online a very attractive move for Godfreys. From our research in to possible competitors trading online, we were surprised to see very few ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses had a presence on the world-wide web.
We therefore saw a gap in the market for an online hardware retailer. If planned and executed correctly we knew the online store would greatly improve sales and increase our customer base, which proved to be an exciting project for us.
Why did you choose to sell in this particular sector?
Our experience and knowledge of supplying heating, plumbing and drainage goods through Godfreys of Lowestoft made us confident that we could launch a successful online hardware store for both the public and tradesman.
With Godfreys of Lowestoft’s established supply chain, we positioned Buyaparcel.com as an extension of its trading enabling us to also broaden our product line to appeal to a wider range of customers.
What was different about starting up online?
The initial set-up of the online store was the same as starting any business. However, the realisation of having to deal with new legal and financial controls regarding online trading soon became apparent.
In fact, it was like navigating through a maze, particularly in the areas of privacy, security, copyright, and taxation. Also, trading etiquette was very different online as to in-store and we had to get used to that quite quickly.
Once we had established our online presence we had to deal with separate set of processes to manage all payments, stock control, dispatching and delivery of the goods. This proved hard with the many disparate systems we had in place.
Moving to a new way of selling proved to be quite difficult. There were limited books and information available to guide us in setting up the online business. We gained this knowledge as the business developed – it proved a great learning curve for all.
How hard was it to get sales moving in the early days?
Completing the build of the Buyaparcel website was only half the equation for a successful online business – next we had to face the daunting task of driving traffic to the site.
In the early days there were no price-comparison sites online and we had to rely solely on the unique range of products we stocked and the competitive prices that we offered to drive brand awareness.
While there was no simple recipe for driving sales, we did start to explore the many online options that were rapidly becoming available that would help increase our customer base.
What ideas did you come up with to get the sales coming in?
After considering the many options to help drive online sales we decided to launch an eBay shop in 2004. eBay was no longer full of people trying to sell junk from their garages; it had become a credible platform for businesses to enhance their online presence and build brand awareness.
The move to eBay significantly increased transaction levels and saw the team manually processing over 500 orders and taking 4-5 hours out of the working day.
The success of the eBay shop also helped increase sales for the Buyaparcel.com website. In fact, our eBay venture highlighted a critical need to adopt a business management software solution that would remove the administrative burden and maintain customer satisfaction levels.
What software did you use and why?
Following the influx of transactions we decided to deploy BlueBay Connect eBay integration software from our long-standing IT supplier Blue Rock Systems. By using BlueBay Connect we can link our eBay transactions to Intact, our integrated stock, order processing and accounts software.
This has enabled us to easily download a trading days’ worth of new eBay transactions and create the customer records on Intact in less than 10 minutes, significantly decreasing dispatch times. The software’s real-time capability has also enabled staff to better manage customer order statuses ensuring a smooth delivery process.
Prior to installing BlueBay we were manually keying in over 500 orders a day, and it would take us hours, if not days, to process and dispatch goods to customers. Now, we have complete control over all order processes which is reflecting positively on both customer service levels and turnover.
Most orders now leave within 24 hours from time of sale. Trading on eBay has dramatically changed our business, helping us to become a leading online retailer. At peak times such as Christmas, we can now easily meet demands and maintain high customer standards which is vital for the success and future growth of our business
Look into the crystal ball and tell me what you see...
The BlueBay system has been so successful that we have decided to automate our entire online presence – allowing website orders to seamlessly appear in Intact, where we can manage the orders using its sales order processing capabilities.
We feel this will increase the efficiency in which we can deal with orders and leave us with more time to spend on activities that provide value back to the business.
Since installing the software we have seen our revenue grow from £5 million to £7 million and hope to increase this even further with the new implementation. We have also come full circle and decided to open a Buyaparcel.com retail shop in our hometown of Lowestoft. If that is successful, we plan to branch out into other regions.
Any regrets?
Buyaparcel.com has experienced rapid growth and has survived some very difficult economic times, so I really don’t think I would do anything differently. Apart from opening up an eBay shop earlier, I think the only other thing would be to offer more niche items to make us stand out from other online retailers.
What’s your best sales tip for other business owners?
Read as much as you can. When I get a spare minute I read industry titles that can sometimes provide great hints and tips that you might not have thought of before. It also helps keep you abreast of developments in your industry.
This is particularly the case with technology – it is changing all the time so keeping up is essential for staying ahead of the game.
