Tag Archive for: Keith Bird

eSellerPro Banks Another £1m Investment What Do you Think?

/by

I’ve received the release below this morning from eSellerPro. They’ve taken in another £1M in funding as the first round of funding of £2M was around two years ago.

I have two questions for you at the bottom of this article, I’d love to hear your feedback on this.

Press Release

eSellerPro receives a further £1m in funding from Notion Capital
Funding follows a record year with £233m in sales processed

London, 16th February 2012: eSellerPro, the leading eCommerce software provider for multi-channel sellers, today announces a follow-on investment of £1m from Notion Capital. The funding follows Notion’s initial investment of £1.8 million in 2010 and will support the company’s ambitious growth plans over the coming years, which include accelerating momentum in its core business together with entry into new markets and further investment in the product.

In just 2 years since the last round of funding, eSellerPro has become one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in the UK, having tripled both its revenues and its customer base which now includes well-known names such as: Tesco Outlet, Dixons, Royal Mail, BMW, JJB Sports, Maplins, Whirlpool and BT Outlet. eSellerPro’s multichannel ecommerce platform processed £233m in sales on behalf of its customers in 2011 and will soon move through the £1m per day threshold.

Following the appointment of Keith Bird as the CEO early last year, the business has also further strengthened its management team adding a CTO, Director of Sales, Director of Product Management and Director of Global Partnerships & Alliances.

The new funding will go towards expanding the business both technically and geographically, ensuring the company maximises on the opportunities in markets beyond the UK, including the US market, worth more than $300bn.

Keith Bird, CEO at eSellerPro, commented, “Since the first funding round in 2010, eSellerPro has both accelerated our growth and laid the foundations for further expansion into new markets including the all-important US. Our vision is to be a key part of the ecommerce ecosystem, ultimately helping retailers to sell more through seamless integration with multiple online channels. The market is expected to continue to grow rapidly over the coming years and this new funding will help us to accelerate our growth in the UK, US and beyond, while continuing to improve the experience for our existing customers”.

Ben White, Partner at Notion Capital, added: “eSellerPro helps customers respond to the changing retail environment and maximise the value of their online presence through integration with third party channels like eBay and Amazon. The ecommerce market is expected to grow to $1tr by 2016 and online marketplaces is one of its fastest growing segments – as such we are very excited about the company’s future prospects and believe they have what it takes to build a very big business.”

eSellerPro’s technology helps retailers integrate their entire online sales process, simplifying and automating tasks and maximising sales opportunities across multiple channels such as eBay and Amazon. eSellerPro currently has customers across the UK, US and Europe.

What Do You Think?

An observation of what is included in the release is the statement “Funding follows a record year with £233m in sales processed“. Taking a guess at the revenue generated from this at 1.5%, allowing for variations on the fee taken as part of the SaaS application, that figure comes in at around £3,495,000.

Obviously this is likely to be out by miles, with anything up or down of this by a value by 40%. So with the extra investment in mind announced today and ongoing revenue stream, this appears to be a bridging loan, to keep the wheels turning (maybe we’ll see a poke at the US marketplace?) while not being restricted by revenue.

As such I have two questions for you:

  • What’s been your experience with eSellerPro over the past few months and do you think that the extra funding will make a difference to the service you receive?
  • Do you believe that eSellerPro is going to follow the route of ChannelAdvisor with numerous funding rounds?

Let me know in the comments box below.

eSellerPro Appoints Interim CTO Edgar Smith

/by

If you’re an eSellerPro client, then you’re going to want to take note of the email sent out this morning from eSellerPro’s CEO Keith Bird.

Thoughts to come later…

Dear Valued Customer

After 6 incredible years, our Founder and serial entrepreneur, Chris Farrelly, has decided he wants to step down from the day to day operations of the business.
Since I joined in January Chris has been our Chief Technology Officer and has built a well rounded development team of 18 people, a support organisation with 13 people and a product management organisation.
Chris now feels it is time to step down and hopefully take life a little easier during 2012 (but knowing Chris as we all do, I see very little chance of that!).

As you will imagine this has been a controlled plan that Chris & I have had and as part of that plan Chris will remain with the business full time until the end of the year to help us with the transition.
Chris will also act a consultant to the company from 2012 and beyond.
Chris will continue to be a significant shareholder and remain on the Board of Directors.

We are very fortunate to have a senior, experienced person to take over from Chris and effective immediately our new Interim CTO is Edgar Smith
Edgar has been with us as a consultant since the beginning of the year acting as an advisor to Chris & I on the software development & support side of the businesses.
Edgar has a very impressive pedigree and is exactly the right person to build the Software Development & Support organisation we need for the next stage of our evolution.

Edgar has detailed and expert technical knowledge of IT systems, solutions delivery and the Software Development Life Cycle in a software career spanning nearly 20 years. He has a Masters Degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge.

Edgar worked for a number of blue chip investment banks and consultancies as a developer including JP Morgan & PWC. In 1996 he co-founded Cresta Group Ltd, a software development, programme management and testing consultancy, taking the role of CTO and Head of R&D. At Cresta he developed award winning software and managed technical expansion across five countries whilst continuing to participate in some of the world’s most challenging projects.

Edgar is Chairman of two testing companies: Green Mango and Testing4Finance and provides technical advice to a number of SAAS companies.

Edgar will report directly to me as will Eamonn Costello who previously reported to Chris. Eamonn has done a fantastic job since joining us earlier this year as our Director of Product Management.

Myself and the rest of the Board of Directors would like to thank Chris not only for his incredible work over the last 6 years but also to recognise that without his software development brilliance eSellerPro would not exist today! We look forward to Chris’ guidance through to the end of the year and continuing to work with him beyond that.

Best regards,
Keith Bird
CEO, eSellerPro

The First eSellerPro Council

/by

While I’m not going to cover who was there and what was covered in this article, I am going to share a key observation and ask you the question “what does this mean for you?”.

The Table

The table consisted of nearly all the largest, most influential clients of eSellerPro and together, probably accounted for a quarter of all turnover taken on eBay UK by professional business sellers or more.

Ironically there were only two businesses that I did not implement sat at the table, the others I had either implemented personally or were the reason why they were using eSellerPro in the first place and with half the room accounting for FSP’s, eBay “Full-Service Providers”, they represented the majority of the eBay Outlets. I did, on entering wonder why the hell I was there (although equally honoured to be part of it) and wore the hat as “moderator”.

My Observation

After picking myself off the floor, as eSellerPro has now got a documented “road map”, it was really interesting to look at commonalities between the people sat at the table.

In all instances, they were “people persons”.

They actually give-a-hoot about their staff and what they are trying to do. Yes, they were all highly motivated business people, but under each one of them, they each had teams of people assisting them.

In three cases, their trusted “right-hand-man” (or woman) were with them. Some had family members as part of the team, mums, sisters and brothers, aunts & uncles, but it extended further than that, much further.

They employed people as part of the ‘family’ and extended their family as part of their business. One even quoted, “I employ mothers, because when they need me to be lenient, than I know I will see the return two-fold in loyalty”, another accounts for a substantial part of an entire islands economy and the others making a significant difference to their local economies.

And that’s the observation, none of them would would be where they are today, sat at that table, responsible for some of the largest chunks of transactional value carried out on the on-line marketplaces without a trusted team below them, which knowingly or unknowing, treating them as “family”.

Summary

In conclusion, a multitude of topics were covered. Goodness knows what several members of the table actually thought of the interactions, although the feedback given to me personally was exceptional.

The one piece of glue outside of eSellerPro joining them all together was undoubtedly, they care about people and without them, none of them would have been sat there.

Stop - Take Action!So, to the original question.
What does this mean for you?


“Apples are Apples” or are they? – eSellerPro V’s ChannelAdvisor

/by

Yesterday was an interesting day’s reading. On the one hand CEO of ChannelAdvisor Scot Wingo was elected to Shop.org’s board of directors, which is frankly quite a feat considering there are only five places for non-retailers & is a highly coveted position.

A quote Scot Wingo:

“I am absolutely honored to join a board of such diverse executives and e-commerce leaders to serve the Shop.org members and continue the development of such a prestigious program,” said Wingo. “I look forward to collaborating with these other industry leaders to influence and inform many of the top issues facing the world of e-commerce.”
Source: Business Wire

And on the other hand a few minutes later, this crops up on Twitter:

It really has been a fantastic year for eSellerPro so far. I joined the company as the new CEO in January,and since then we have seen several other key additions to the management team and the sales team has doubled in size. Our annual revenues have grown to £2.4M with more than 100% growth forecast for the current year. If that wasn’t good enough, the business now has more than 200 customers, including well-known brands such as BMW, Dixons Group, JJB Sports, Office Shoes, Maplins and Tesco. 

It is a very exciting time for us all at eSellerPro, and as we continue to grow we can only expect things to get even better.

Keith Bird, CEO, eSellerPro
Source: eSellerPro Blog

While at least three of these are 3rd-party clients is almost irrelevant, what is interesting is the ~100% growth and disclosure (see here) that the platform is churning over £1M in transactions per day.

Summary

While some way from the $3 Billion USD ChannelAdvisor processed in a year[2010 ?], £1M appears to be rather small. However apples are certainly not “Apples” when trying to compare two SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms that operate in the same market, one has been around since 2001, the other is just getting started,  however could this be where its heading?

Image courtesy of Fir0002