Shopee has been a boon for entrepreneurs in South East Asia, and
James is one such shopee seller, I like to call more appropriately as a Shopee Entrepreneur.
He has in less than a year set up a successful, growing profitable
shopee store. In fact, he is scaling and recently moved to a bigger
warehouse.
He also happens to be the first shopee seller on Konigle and a huge
Konigle fan. Let's talk to him about his Shopee journey and how Konigle
helps him every day.
Me : Hey James, good to see you, I never tire of
hearing your story and how you've built a growing profitable shopee
store in under a year, we are big fans, so what's the origin story ?
How did you get started on Shopee ?
James : I love deals and love online websites as a
way to find discounts. As a parent keeping young kids entertained with
toys becomes quite expensive as they get bored and the costs add up.
This made me find even cheaper deals.
Then it struck me, why not just find good products to sell on Shopee and I took the plunge around a year ago.
Me: Being a Shopee Seller is hard work, can you share what your day to day looks like, or even better, how that has changed after Konigle ?
James: Yes its hard work. As a solopreneur, my day
starts and ends with packing and shipping orders. I spend a lot of time
tracking competitors, finding new products to sell, finding suppliers,
managing stock , running marketing all while raising young kids. I have
no time to really work on the business, as I am doing lot of operational
stuff. But as you grow, especially as a self funded business, I do not
have the luxury to hire a lot of good staff to scale for operational
roles.
That's when I started looking for tools, that can help me with boring
and repititive stuff. I have read and seen first hand how smart
automation helps in bigger tech companies. When a friend recommended
Konigle, I tried it out and to be honest, I cannot imagine going back
and working without Konigle. I think every shopee seller looking to
grow, should use Konigle. Its a powerful tool and really pays for
itself.
Me : Let's just pause at that, can you point specific aspects of how Konigle is helping you in day to day ?
James: Quite a few. The pricing tools, make it so
easy to run promotions that do not expire, saving me so many lost sales,
rule based life cycle markdowns, auto boosting.
Konigle really understands inventory management. Its so seemless and
intelligent, the alerts on stock levels, maintaining inventory levels on
my store, creating a purchase order within minutes.
Its quite cool to be honest.
And the best features are the product discovery and tracking
features, this is a game changer, this makes it so easy for me to
estimate demand, I have easily saved 10-15 hours a month just using this
feature and its much smarter too.
James : Can I speak about the private beta features that I am testing ?
James: So, the Keywords tool is such an amazing tool
for e-commmerce and marketplace sellers. I can not only track
competitors, but also estimate product demand using keywords in real
time. I use this to decide my ad bids, optimise my listings for seo and
so much.
Me : We have been really impressed by how data
driven you are in running your Shopee store, We have seen so many big
companies struggle to be data driven, and data just ends up being a
buzzword, can you share a bit more on how you are practically using data
for your business ops?
James: As I mentioned above the reason I have been
able to scale my business to 6 figures in under a year is that I have
used data to find winning products and put in a lot of hard work to
provide an amazing seller experience, and a lot of the data research
that I do is where Konigle helps me. Thank you.
Me: Let's go a bit deeper into product discovery and
research, which is so important to be successful in a marketplace like
Shopee, how do you find winning products to sell on Shopee ?
James: I try to estimate the demand for products
that are doing well and figure out a good price to sell them at. Before
Konigle , I would do all of this manually, finding products and
tracking their trends on excel. With Konigle I now can do all of this
automatically, it saves so much of my time and the research is also
better. Its game changing.
Me: Let's talk about product bumping, do you think it really works, your experience around it ?
James: In my experience product bumping works. You
need to focus on a few products and bump them for 7 days or more to
start seeing results.
Me: Let's do a quick NPS Survey for Konigle with you
? On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being higher how likely are you to
recommend Konigle to a Shopee Seller ?
James: I would say a 10, and I understand some
shopee sellers like to do things traditionally or are doing this as a
side gig. But if you're really serious about making it big as a Shopee
Seller I would highly recommend it to every shopee seller.
Me: I remember you once said, that you would be
surprised if a Shopee Seller does not want to use Konigle, although
music to my ears, why is it that you're such a big fan of Konigle ?
James: You guys get it. You have features that are
useful, no fancy stuff. Konigle keeps getting better every week,
everytime I log into Konigle I spend more and more time inside Konigle.
Its fantastic, saves me so much time and you listen to feedback.
I am a fan. Don't stop making Konigle better.
Me: Thanks James, for your time. I am so honored to
have you as our user. More power to you and all Shopee Entrepreneurs. We
hope to serve all of you.