E-commerce continues to grow at a double digit pace annually and continues to take market share from traditional retail. ShippingEasy sees an incredible range of innovations that are being tested in the market, and is supportive of all the attempts at defining a truly 21st century retail experience. Founded in 2011, ShippingEasy provides an unparalleled online shipping and back-office platform for online sellers.
Touching on ShippingEasy
ShippingEasy relocated in 2012 from Australia to Austin, TX. It supports diverse shipping workflows and multi-carrier label generation while enabling the centralization of all orders, shipments, inventory, and customers into one entirely searchable system. The company’s thriving business serves e-commerce merchants with ease of use tools and world class service. The entire product suite is designed with minimal configuration and training in mind. The ShippingEasy team makes enterprise level solutions accessible to the SMB (Small and Medium Business) marketplace.
About the CEO
Katie May, CEO of ShippingEasy and a former Management Consultant with Booz & Co, has a long history of working with startups. She revels in the pace and challenges that startups offer and the talent they attract. She joined ShippingEasy as CEO in 2012, moving the headquarters to her hometown of Austin, but before ShippingEasy she had entrepreneurial success throughout her career. In 1999, she joined the executive team at Seek, Melbourne, Australia, as Head of Marketing and Product. She invested six years building the Seek brand, and leading the product effort at the award-winning website through IPO. Katie then founded Kidspot, the largest and most successful online website for mothers in Australia and New Zealand, ultimately selling the business to News Corp in 2011. Then, she started the aggressive growth efforts following ShippingEasy’s founding in Sydney, Australia.
Solutions That Make Shipping Easy
ShippingEasy makes shipping easy and less expensive, offering multiple solutions in a single system to support online sellers across their back-office operations. Its cloud-based applications enable mission critical operational capabilities with unparalleled reliability and uptime. The company’s expansion in inventory management has streamlined purchases, sales, and shipping across all selling channels, enabling a multi-channel view for the first time. Customer management offers a straightforward CRM with email marketing campaigns and inbuilt capabilities. ShippingEasy is affordable, accessible, and easy to learn and leverage to grow an online business.
Hurdles in the Way
Influencing customers to switch from an existing solution that is “good enough” is the biggest hurdle. Changing systems feels onerous to the seller so convincing them to experience the software and feel the power of a modern solution is crucial. Minimum viable products aren’t enough, a new shipping solution needs to be “definitively better” to attract customers. Offering a demo run by a solution expert and a free trial allows a merchant to see first hand the time and cost savings available in a solution like ShippingEasy – plus added extras like Inventory Management and CRM tools.
Scopes in Retail
With the immense scope of growth in e-commerce, retailers are strategizing to expand their business, from pure play e-commerce providers creating physical retail experiences, to traditional retailers expanding their e-commerce capabilities while leveraging more dynamic distribution models. The opportunities are astounding and reward those who meet the dynamic needs of today’s customers. There are tremendous opportunities for SMBs as well to double their addressable retail market by enabling overseas sales. To perform this successfully, a coordinated effort is required between the range of sales and the operational activities to promote products. The promotion should be in a way that meets the needs of international consumers while enabling more efficient back-office processes. These processes reduce the international customers’ time from order to having the product in hand, keeping the total cost of purchase as low as possible.
The Differentiator
No other retail solution provider focuses on supporting the SMB market with as broad or robust a solution suite as ShippingEasy. The company is able to provide solutions targeted to the direct needs of the SMB seller combined with the support for a broad range of ecosystem integrations. Such integrations enable customers to leverage best in class capabilities specific to their individual business requirements. Today’s SMB business finds itself managing 10 or more unique systems to sell, promote, manage products, inventory, and suppliers, analyze their customers, and complete orders while enabling seamless, real-time back-office visibility into the health of their business. ShippingEasy’s suite of solutions reduces the number of vendors necessary to scale while supporting SMBs with flexibility in interconnecting the solutions they require to meet the unique needs of their individual businesses.
Vision for the Future
ShippingEasy will continue to expand the range of solutions enabled via the e-commerce platform. The company has earned the trust of an incredibly broad range of users and it continues to focus on solving business problems unique to SMB online sellers focused on domestic and international markets. The company sees an enormous opportunity to provide best-in-class capabilities to SMB e-commerce retailers that allow subscribers to consolidate the number of systems they use while leveraging capabilities targeted to the specific e-commerce requirements.