January 2008
Table of Contents
Featured Article: Looking Back to Move ForwardBy Jake Sabey - Education Specialist Happy New Year! Hopefully this article finds you reflecting on a successful holiday season and year. Sure success to most businesses means profit; however, by success I mean experience. You do not have to have a profitable year for it to be successful. This is the perfect opportunity to reflect on the overall experience of your business. Compare where you are now to where you were last year this time. Some of you may not have even been in business yet, and others may have celebrated another business birthday. Some may have had a positive experience, some may have room to grow. Regardless, you made it this far, and you are reading this, which means the business wheels inside your head are still spinning. With that said, congratulations on the success of your business and the desire to progress! 2008 presents itself as an opportunity for you to look at your business through both a microscope and a birds eye view. Take a look at some articles that will help you step into another year prepared as a retail business.
In the form of a toast, may 2008 find you more successful in every aspect of your business! About the Author: Jake Sabey is an eBay Certified Consultant and an Education Specialist for Doba. Jake's educational strategies and methodologies help online retailers meet and exceed their business-related goals. Prior to working for Doba, Jake was a team leader, supervisor, and trainer for Toys R Us, Sinclair Oil, SBC, and AT&T. Partner Highlight
TurboTax Marketplace Spotlight: Marketplace Reflection 2007By Jeff Knight, Vice President of Marketplace The start of a new year is always a reflective and exciting time. For Doba, 2007 was a crazy, exciting year and from a Marketplace perspective, we established the foundation for 2008 to be an even better year. In 2007, we spent a lot of resources listening to retailers – and we learned a lot from your feedback. Ranking the feedback, the most important contributions were: 1.) Add transparency to the marketplace. In 2007, we began to share supplier information including their real names, fulfillment and cancellation rates. In 2008, we will continue to provide timelier and greater visibility to marketplace data to retailers. 2.) Images and content. In mid-2007, we added a new feedback mechanism that sent your requests/feedback directly to the supplier. Over 50% of all feedback received related to requests for additional details, descriptions and images. In 2007, Doba entered strategic partnerships with various content providers. These relationships allow us to continue to add greater detail and more complete images and descriptions. In addition, we added several enhancements to our supplier platform that allow suppliers to make quick modifications to their items when necessary. In 2007, 98% of all in-stock items had images and we will continue to improve on this average. 3.) Shipping options and rates. Admittedly, we were not able to make much headway on providing additional shipping options and standardized rates in 2007. That said, shipping is at the top of our priority list and we will announce exciting changes and enhancements in the next few months. 4.) Inventory and pricing updates. In 2007, Doba completed the base development of its supplier platform. Supplier data is now standardized and not only allows for rapid onboarding of suppliers, but more importantly, it made it easier for suppliers to provide timelier updates to their existing product catalogs. On the retailer side of the marketplace, we are excited to announce expanded access and export of product data in the next few weeks. If I put all the feedback together, the primary lesson we took from 2007 is that our software platform needs to continue to accommodate each of your specific needs and grow with you as your ‘pains’ change. In 2007, we made the first initial changes towards offering multiple solutions – all based on Doba’s base software platform – each geared towards the immediate needs of your business. All services that offer a ‘one size fits all’ miss retailers’ needs depending on where they are in their business. For example, a retailer looking to sell products on eBay versus the retailer needing to automate their ProStores integration versus the retailer requiring automated solutions for their website backend – all have very distinct and specialized requirements for their respective software platforms. Doba’s commitment in 2008 is to continue to develop features and enhancements that answer your needs – no matter what your preferred retail channel is. As a final note, this week marks the beginning of the 2008 trade show and market season. Starting with CES next week, Doba will be out speaking with manufacturers, artisans, distributors, and liquidators. If you want Doba to speak with anyone or would like to meet Doba merchandisers in person – drop us a line at feedback@doba.com and we will make an honest attempt to accommodate your requests. Thank you all for a wonderful 2007 and on behalf of the Marketplace staff, I want wish you a happy and prosperous 2008. About the Author: As the Vice President of Marketplace, Jeff Knight is responsible for all aspects of the merchandising strategy, supplier acquisition, and vertical category management and fulfillment operations of Doba's marketplace. Prior to Doba, Jeff was Director of Merchandising for Overstock.com where he developed the growth and management of the Computer and Home Office category. Jeff's background includes merchandising and technology leadership roles at DealDeal.com and BCI International. He earned Bachelor and Masters of Arts degrees in Communication from the University of Wyoming. Partner Highlight
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Magazine Member Q&A: "Why do some websites say Doba is a scam?"From time to time, we field questions or concerns from customers who have read something negative about Doba. This month, we want to address what Doba is as well as what we are not. In marketing one of the easiest ways to position your product’s value, is to put it in contrast to the leading product, solution or service. In essence, instead of explaining what their product, or service is, the marketer focuses on what someone else's is not. In politics, candidates do this all the time. The idea is simple: by accusing their opponent of discretions or inconsistencies, they take the attention off their own message. If it works, it makes the mudslinger seem like a genuine ‘good guy’. While it may not be the strongest long-term strategy; it is a quick and dirty way to promote your product. If you do a search for Doba, or even drop shipping, you will see pages of results that include Doba. Some of the results are sponsored by Doba and by its affiliates. In addition to these results, you will undoubtedly see results stating, “Doba is a Scam.” In general, these results are sponsored by marketers or affiliates of competing solutions who are employing the mudslinging strategy and using Doba’s name to garner more traffic and customers. However, their claims are almost always unfounded or misguided. The reason most cited for Doba being a “scam”, is “Doba is not a wholesaler!” Ironically, we never claim to be wholesaler. If Doba is not a wholesaler, then what is Doba? Doba is a technology company with a software platform. The software platform aggregates different wholesaler, distributor, and manufacturer products, inventory and order information into a common, standardized platform which retailers use to research, list and hopefully, resell products directly to their consumers. In addition, Doba’s platform includes software tools that allow the retailer to organize and filter literally millions of products and manage their back office functions such as order fulfillment and fraud. All monthly fees are based upon the data the retailer wants and sophistication of the back office tools they require. Any website or consultant who tells the retailer that they can easily work directly with hundreds of wholesalers is lying or at minimum, providing an overly simplistic view of retail. While all wholesalers may have the same basic information, none of them store it and provide it to retailers in exactly the same way. That means a retailer who wishes to work with more than one supplier still needs to standardize product data into a common format in order for it to be useful. Furthermore, the retailer needs the technical ability and resources required to make this process automated (or at minimum, replicable) so they don’t start over from scratch each day. Once the data is standardized into a common format, the retailer still needs to filter and organize it into meaningful results. The ‘shotgun approach’ of just blasting entire feeds into search engines/marketplaces and hoping that the end-user finds the gem within the list is a naïve and ineffective merchandising strategy. In addition, keeping your front facing data in sync with your back-office functions can be a nightmare. Without Doba, a retailer would need to create working relationships with all the suppliers they want to work with. Whether cold-calling or going to tradeshows, each supplier needs to be contacted and a working relationship needs to be started. While some wholesalers and distributors embrace drop shipping, many are very hesitant to enter retailer relationships that have not proven themselves. The retailer may have all the resources and technical ability they need to successfully integrate with the wholesaler, but that doesn’t mean that the wholesaler will embrace working with the retailer. Most successful wholesalers (like any successful business) have very little time to evaluate all the requests they receive and will spend most of their energies working on relationships that have the quickest, easiest, most strategic return on investment. From a practical standpoint, Doba sells packages ranging from $49 to $149 a month; however, the value of Doba is not just the margin from wholesale product sales, but also an elimination of the costs it takes to produce sales. For example, a employee being paid $10 per hour costs an organization roughly $1,600 a month without considering insurance, workman’s compensation, and overhead – not to mention the cost of employee learning the ropes, making mistakes and working at less than 100% capacity. One of the biggest barriers small businesses run in scaling their operations, is under-valuing their time and costs initially and running into trouble as the costs of those extra personnel, resources, etc., begin to grow. The most experienced and largest retail organizations in the world utilize platforms and technologies like Doba. Some use third parties to manage their own inventory and others use software packages that allow them to merchandise more effectively. There is no legitimate reason why the small retailer shouldn’t have access to similar tools. In essence, Doba’s service levels the playing field for small online retailers by allowing them to employ the same strategies as fortune 500 companies for a fraction of the cost. Is Doba a scam? Of course not. Is Doba the right solution for all online retailers? That depends entirely on the retailer’s needs and available resources. Only you can make that ROI decision for your business. However, anyone claiming that there is a ‘secret source’ is at best, very inexperienced. We Want to Hear from You! Want to see your question featured in the eNewsletter Member Q&A? Well we want to hear from you! Please email education@doba.com if you have any non-account related questions or topics you would like us to write about. If you have questions concerning your Doba account, such as billing, product or order questions, please search our knowledgebase site content or contact our Customer Support. Partner Highlight
LegalZoom Supplier Information: Transition into 2008Normally in this section of the eNewsletter we list new suppliers that have been added to the Doba Product Catalog. However, Doba did not add any new suppliers during December of 2007. Instead, we used this time to clean up and closely manage what is left of 2007, and prepare for what lies ahead in 2008. By not adding new suppliers in the 4th quarter, we lessen the risk of possible hiccups for your business that could occur during the busiest time of the year and ensure a better transition into January. Stay tuned to the "News You Can Use" section on doba.com, as well as the future issues of the eNewsletter for new suppliers. |
