Multi-Channel Sales from the Merchant’s Point of View – with Ciprian Cazacu from easySales

This talk focuses on the journey of Empria, an e-commerce business that began in Romania in 2018. The speaker shares how they transitioned from having no knowledge of online sales to successfully integrating a multi-channel sales strategy using the Easy Sales platform. They faced initial challenges such as stock issues and poorly functioning integrations before adopting Easy Sales, which streamlined their operations. The speaker highlights the importance of embracing change and acting quickly rather than overthinking decisions. They emphasize that Easy Sales has improved efficiency by centralizing processes, allowing them to concentrate more on customer service rather than technical details.

Hi everyone. Uh we think about it that the best approach it will be through one of our customer uh even from the beginnings many years ago to talk about the experience that they have it by using uh easy sales platform. this ecosystem that we are trying to grow it in order to efficientize and automate the e-commerce through a simple platform as the name of the company is

easy to help you to sell your products through multiple sales channels but uh I think the best way in order to present how the things are working is through the voice of our one of our customer and Uh here is Tudor. I'll have some questions for you in order to uh discuss a little bit easy sales changed your vision about the e-commerce but tutor could you briefly

tell the story of uh empriya before easy cells and how it was and yes hello everyone uh thank you very much chiprian for inviting me to this um event. Our company started in uh Romania in uh 2018. We uh had um I started the company with my wife and we had two small children and um we started using some baby safety products and they proved to be

quite successful and we developed it into our business. Initially the name was buy for baby and uh we uh rebranded two years ago into Empria. We had no idea about anything related to e-commerce or commerce all altogether. Uh we started by accident and uh one evening I uh saw an ad on Facebook uh from Emag and I was uh 40 years old. I had no idea a

mug was a marketplace. I had no idea what the marketplace was and I just played a bit with it and um I opened an account and then I um was approached by someone from a mag and he taught me how to upload a product and I did and I forgot about it and two weeks later uh I received an email you have a sale on Emma and

I went to my wife said okay what do we do now and uh she we had no idea and then we had another sale and then another one and we decided that maybe it's time to to open an online store of our own and uh we did some research. We found go a Romanian platform that uh helped us a lot and uh this is how it started.

Yeah. Yeah. But uh more than that uh before adopting our multi- channelannel solution uh what were the main challenges that Empia faced in the managing the online sales okay so so the first challenge was that we had no idea what we were doing about anything we knew nothing about it and we were on a very steep learning curve uh we started developing our store we were selling

on mago in parallel but we had the stock issues. We made a a custom integration between uh our store and a mug and it worked like Really didn't work at all. We it was really a problem for us and uh about one year later we were approached about from by easy sales from cost and uh he talked talked to me about easy sales what they can do

for us and I said okay. It was in between the lockdowns in the pandemic uh 2020 and then he called me again and I think the third time I said okay we'll do it send me the paperwork and we we do it and uh I I still remember I called my wife and I said look we are going to integrate easy sales to help us with the

emag and uh I had to put my phone like that because she started screaming at me we do not have time for another integration and uh but now she's uh converted and uh it's one of the best decisions we made in our business. But in the end what uh motivate Empria to expand multi sales multi- sales channel platform why it motivate you to sales through not only

on your website or e-ag or through other marketplaces through the region or we had a initially we had a quick successes in our sales we sold the growth was uh quite steep it's easy to grow fast when you start from zero And uh everything was new to us. Everything was shiny. We saw all these apps, all the integrations and we wanted to test everything. And uh we

tested everything that we uh had the chance to quite often. It was uh very time consuming and energy consuming but uh we wanted to experience everything. We did it with passion and that's where easy sales came into place in our uh day-to-day operations. Yeah. And also maybe it will be useful uh to talk about how integrating easy sales influence your multi- channelannel sales strategy. Uh which one

did you prioritize when you start selling online? So first of all by chance was eag but second of all it was your website. Yes. You know my wife she's an accountant. She wants everything done perfectly. Uh I'm not like that. I want everything done. But so we integrated multiple marketplaces through easy sales. Some of those were not okay for us and we gave them up. But we

we tested uh we did em Romania Bulgaria Hungary Alex Doral Kazi and so on. Um, and this is one side of it because it made things easy for us the the enrollment process. We didn't need to have 10 marketplaces that we looked at separately. We just have everything in one place. And um this is the the first bit is uh very very helpful. Of course, then you

can u adjust your product descriptions. For example, uh our SEO guys said, "Look, it's not okay that you have the same description on your site and on Mach because uh Google sees it as duplicate content." It's all okay. We'll have a different description for the marketplaces and a unique one for our own website. And this one was made easy by easy sales and by JPT as well

lately. So that's one. So in this case would you describe the most significant uh functionality in EC cells uh that is to adapt your description based on the marketplace or others like inventory or which one is the most significant uh functionality in easy that help your I don't think it's one most significant it comes in stages first First of all, it's easy to access multiple marketplaces. Uh

then it's easy to have different descriptions and uh sometimes we change we let the product description dynamic on some marketplaces and we cut it uh on the other so it remains static. um the stock we don't have a stock issues because we know we on each marketplace when we run out of stock from our main uh account everything goes up. Uh and then of course it's the

operational efficiency. Uh we uh do not have to allocate so many work hours on admin on the admin part for each marketplace. It's much more efficient to do it in one place. that is uh easy So in this case are there any specific KPIs that highlight the success and strategy? So there are uh anything that you track currently in order to help your business. Uh I'm here

to give an honest testimonial but is that's the idea. Uh figures uh no longer make sense to me. So I can't say that we follow this KPI and everything is so complicated lately that you I I personally do not know um what external factor influences our outcome. Maybe it's um easy sales, maybe it's Trump's policies, maybe the pirates in the Swiss canal, the Chinese, I don't know

everything. There are so many crisis at this time that is difficult to to say, okay, we push this button, we wait for two months and we see the results and these results are because of easy sales because of whatever. So it's really complicated. There is one thing I I know for sure without tracking any specific KPIs is uh we started our relationship in 2020. It's five years

now and not a single time we took into account the option of uh giving up a easy sales. So thank you very much. It's there. So our NPS will grow. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. But uh the idea is to try to explain it through your voice uh how easy sales impact uh actually your business and how uh the others will uh follow your example

and why they should do it. Why and why you didn't do it manually? Why you didn't hire more people and uh working manually on each platform uh to maintain all those sales? uh why you did why you choose the first time because you choose not your wife actually uh so it's not easy to integrate a marketplace uh there are constant errors on uh every integration we have

but we have integrations with uh our online platform with easy sales with marketplaces with couriers with courier integrators and so on and uh there are errors on all of Uh the the important part is who you talk to to sort those errors out. If we uh for example you had a feed error in our platform, if we had to discuss with Emark with Altex with all the

marketplaces, it would be a nightmare. We discussed with easy sales uh and uh we are not childhood friends here. I met uh Chiprian at a conference and ever since I meet him at each and every important e-commerce conference and if he's not there his colleagues are there. We have a face uh that we put on our uh relationships and uh I believe this is most important thing

to to build actual relationships in uh in business uh and this is why I appreciate our cooperation. Thank you very much for that. I'm doing my best. I'm doing uh everything it's possible in order to satisfy and listen all the customers. I think in any business like in yours I think you are listening your customer what they want what products they are looking for. So it's important

in any places. uh but um during the these five years what challenges did uh Empria encountered uh during the transition especially at the beginning uh when you start using easy cells because you are used in some way how your team uh actually interpret and start using it how hard it was to adopt it actually it wasn't hard at all because it replaced a solution that was working

poorly. So okay maybe we put 5 10 hours of setup in the initial stage and that was let's say the difficult part to understand how the platform works but from that uh the advantages were obvious. So we had no issues on on this side. Of course things are not perfect every day. Every day we have some sort of error, not necessarily with easy sales but across all

the platforms. But we know that if we have an issue with the marketplace, we have someone to talk to, someone that will respond and if let's say someone from the call center doesn't respond quickly and it's a very big problem for us, we have uh layers to escalate at the end. I said, "Chiprian, we really have a big problem here. Help us." But that's very seldom the

case. Yeah. But uh what lesson have you learned that could benefit other merchants like you considering a similar shift? So when they want to move from uh they are doing by their own or and uh when they are starting using easy cells what you would recommend to them uh if you are in the same situation as I was that I'm the strategy guy in the company uh

my wife is the implementation arm and I come with the ideas and she comes with the effort to implement. If you are in my case somehow take your chances and do it. I mean I do not believe in contemplating things very much. You have to act. You do not have the we do not have the time to uh just think about how nice it would be if

the planets align and whatever. You have to do it. The worst case scenario it it doesn't work. You lose maybe a few hundred euros and uh 20 30 40 hours of work and then you say okay this does not work for me. Let's move to the next step. But if you have like uh 20 pending projects in your brain that maybe some days I will try that,

maybe someday I for me it doesn't work. Yeah. But uh what do you think about selling on other countries like Bulgarian Romania or Hungary or Romanian in Bulgaria or Poland or whatever? Uh what's your perspective from this point of view? Yes. Uh how hard it was? We only sold in Bulgaria and Hungary so far only through a mug. It wasn't easy and it wasn't a particularly big

success for us. Um I'm still trying to figure out why. But uh two 3 weeks ago we launched our first physical store in Bucharest. That was a major step for us. And the next major um thing we want to do is to start selling independently in U Muldova and maybe in the western countries of Europe. So um there are challenges once again but uh I think action

is uh what needs to be taken not contemplation. during the experience through those years with easy cells uh what you would uh say that now saved you from not doing or doing better. So uh did you see it like an saving of uh people of man hours or did you see it like an opportunity to sales on uh multiple sales channel in other channels or how you

see it from your perspective? Uh so the way I see our business uh as I said we are a baby safety products uh online store and we deal with uh mothers and fathers that have babies and are very anxious about their security and maybe they uh did not sleep very well the last few days. And this these are our customers and uh my business focus is uh

on finding the right products and on delivering the the right service to them to suggest uh the products to have a post sale services and uh this sort of thing. I am not a tech guy. I don't want want to become one. uh and uh easy sales and our other plat uh partners helped us remove these barriers. I do not need to understand the the processes very

well. Okay. I started learning about the feeds and the API and whatever but uh we do not have to spend our work figuring out technical details and my colleagues can actually speak with the clients and uh generate invoices in bulk from easy sales instead of doing manual labor and labeling or whatever they can discuss with the clients and that's what's important in our business. So the efficiency

actually. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And the last question in your opinion, what is the key success successfully managing and scaling a multi- channelannel sales in today e-commerce landscape? I am obviously very proud to be here. This is an extraordinary event and I'm um flattered to be here. Uh but I also need to be humble enough to say I'm not Jeff Bezos. I did not find the key to

success. I'm struggling each day to manage to get some growth in my business. So, uh I will not be able to share the keys to success. What we my personal motto is to that the business is not a speed competition. It's a endurance one. So you have to take each day on its turn and uh keep on doing the hard hard stuff because if it's difficult for

you, it's difficult for everyone else and if you are more resilient than the others then you will be ahead in the competition and uh this is how I try to do business. Yeah, thank you very much for being today here. Uh everyone if you want to figure it out more we have a boot here also and we will explain you and we'll show you exactly how easy

sell it works actually the name we try to be easy to use easy to understand we have a Romanian and English and a Bulgarian team that can help you with everything you need and uh hopefully the idea is to have a larger community and together to try to grow and efficientize automate the e-commerce Thank you everyone, all of you and uh waiting you to our booth. Thank

you.