Mastering international selling is about managing the risk of entering new markets, streamlining international operations and leveraging seasonality benefits. Using the Volo software to scale their international sales has allowed our customers to grow their businesses quickly, safely and sustainably, by finding new customers with attractive lifetime values. In this post we share some insights from our customers on international sales success, in their own words.
Only Global
Nigel Matthews of board games, toys and collectibles retailer Only Global uses the Volo multi channel software to manage international sales and has increased revenues 20-fold in 5 years: “Cross border trading has been the surprise package for us. I can honestly say that selling internationally was not in our business plan when we started with Volo. It simply wasn’t on the radar. We just wanted to control our selling on eBay and branch into Amazon, print our orders, that kind of thing.
“But when we found Volo’s system could do all this cross border trading out of the box, well we stumbled into it. For us, eBay and Amazon were the crux of the international selling picture, and so we wanted to manage those relationships very carefully. It’s tempting with the Volo platform to go gangbusters, but the best way is to take it slowly and make sure you don’t get it wrong. We can manage these multiple channels simultaneously with the channel profiling that the platform does. It manages all the portals and updates and debits them all.”
The Green Spark Plug Company
Vehicle parts and accessories merchant The Green Spark Plus Company uses Volo to manage its international sales and has increased its revenues ten-fold in three years. Tom Green of the Green Spark Plug Company: “The way the business has been able to grow under my control is what I’m most pleased about. We did a tiny bit of export beforehand, now it’s at 50%. Also, the racing season is very important to us, so March to September is our critical period. That said, being able to export to the southern hemisphere has helped soften the seasonality swings considerably.”
The Board Basement
Winter sports equipment, clothing and accessories merchant The Board Basement uses the Volo software to manage its international sales and has gone from £250,000 to £1,000,000 in 3 years. Stuart Tait, co-founder and Director of The Board Basement: “Cross border is really important for us, it’s about 20-25% of our business. Volo’s ecommerce software has made it easier for us to expand in international selling. We’re lucky in that in our business we don’t need to do translating. We offer international shipping, and we’re also on Amazon Germany, France, Italy and soon Japan. Australia is a very important market for us. Last year over our summer we sold 140 snowboards to Australia.”
The Big Printer Company
Office equipment and consumables merchant The Big Printer Company uses the Volo platform to manage its international selling and saw 20% of its products increase revenues by 15% across the whole business. Tamsin MacCormack, Partner of The Big Printer Company: We now have about 22,000 SKUs in the system and we trade on Amazon, eBay and Flubit. We sell internationally and make sure we list in the major territory languages.
“The Volo system allows us to run cross-platform and cross-border. Without it there’s no way we could manage all these instances of our product set, a lot of which are drop ship. We couldn’t do it. We get a lot of learning and direction from working with the Volo team. They really help us as a small business. It seems like every time we talk we get another idea for how we can improve our business processes.”
Mill Outlets
Home and Garden merchant Mill Outlets uses the Volo ecommerce tool to manage its international sales and has grown 30-35% annually. Marcus Galliford, Managing Director of Zukeo, the holding company for Mill Outlets: “We’re on all the marketplaces. We have five staff in the business and we take all the opportunities we can to widen our online presence. We’ve got 3 eBay stores and 2 main websites. We’re also on Rakuten and on Amazon in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. Cross border trading is currently about 20% of our turnover.”
