About LUFiS INC.
Sachio business story was all about “How you can turn your hobby into a profitable business venture”.
Sachio started his fishing lure business on eBay in 2014. LUFiS INC. offers a variety of custom fishing lure which has a unique style and can be utilized to trap different types of fishes. The lure offered by them has the right color, movement, and vibrations that can bait fish easily.
It was Sachio’s fondness for fishing that triggered the idea of starting an online fishing lure business. However, he had apprehensions on how his enthusiasm for fly fishing can be transformed into a full-fledged business venture.
The first step in establishing his online business
When asked what made him think of having a fish lure business online?
“I love fishing. Due to these fishing lures, it was easy for me to bait & hook fish. I know that there are plenty others like me who have huge fondness for fishing. However, they are not always aware of this fantastic tool that can help them bait & hook fish with much less hassle. This was the moment I thought it would be great if I can turn this into a business opportunity. If I make fishing lure available online, a lot of people like me can easily have access to the type of lure they are looking for, and can take advantage of it.”
When asked about his online Business Goal?
“I knew some wholesalers who sell customized high-quality fishing lures. I contacted them and started purchasing lures in bulk. Purchasing the product in bulk got me good concession on the price, which further helped me to offer my products at a reasonable rate.”
Choosing eBay over other Marketplaces
“I was not happy with the typical marketplace infrastructure that other marketplace solution providers were offering. Some of the reasons I choose eBay over other Marketplaces were:
Branding Solution:
eBay offers easy-to-use-and-customized storefronts, where I can create descriptions about my brand in the About us page and list my products seamlessly. Other Marketplaces doesn’t allow you to promote your brand, they just allows you to list your products online.
eBay encourages cross-selling & up-selling:
eBay recommends using Promotions Manager to merchandise relevant items. Once any buyer takes a look at any of my products, he can see the list of other items I am selling on eBay.
eBay International:
My priority was not just to sell in the USA, but to offer my products to other countries as well which includes UK, Germany and Spain, this is one reason I thought eBay would perfectly fit my requirements as ebay has the same listing standards for all its international sites.
Sachio opted for an eBay International account through which he can have access to all its international eBay sites.
Challenges
“With eBay, listing products on multiple countries was easy, all I was required to do is to follow the instructions placed by eBay global buying hub and the products got immediately listed on eBay USA, UK, DE, and ES. However, managing inventory across these multiple sites was still a cause of worry, I even started encountering situation where I was clueless about my current level of stock and fulfillment of certain orders.”
Sachio was using spreadsheets to manage stocks & orders which was not proving to be very helpful. On top of that, he was also supposed to manage taxation and other financial transactions.
“I had to add up all the inventory that didn’t get sold and compare it to the one that was sold and create a profit/loss statement. Plus, I had many different items to sell online, differentiating their stock on the basis of the product type was a headache.
I was precisely looking for an inventory management software which can constantly sync my orders, track inventory & update the stock level across all my eBay channels”
Solution
Ebay International Compatibility
“Orderhive streamlined our business process by syncing with eBay international sites, some of the processes it automates for me are:
Auto-updating the Stock level – Once a sale is made, Orderhive automatically updates the stock-level across all my eBay sites. As a result, I maintain a consistent level of stock across the sites and mitigate the chances of overselling.
Quick server response: “While testing Inventory Management software, I have observed that Orderhive was quicker & efficient in terms of updating price & quantity across the channels. It takes even less than a minute for Orderhive to update the price & stock level, while the other software takes 5 times the time taken by Orderhive.”
Real-time analytics on my best selling products – “After I integrated Orderhive with my eBay account, I got access to various real-time reports which helped me figure out my best selling products.”
Custom Solution – Multiple Product Merge
“Due to lack of a multi-channel Inventory management system, I was maintaining different stock level on my eBay sites. So If the available quantity for product A is 100, I use to allocate 20 quantity of Product A to each of my eBay site, due to lack of stock adjustments I was overselling on some of my ebay channel while running out of stock on my other eBay channel.”
Adding to the pain, with a traditional methodology to maintain the stock, Sachio had maintained different SKU’s for the same product. For e.g. the SKU allocated for a product A in eBay UK was different than the one allocated to Product A in eBay USA, and this applies to all the eBay sites.
“This was a tough issue to handle. I was terrified by the idea of manually checking SKUs of each product and mapping them within my eBay channels to maintain a single SKU for each product.”
Also, it wasn’t a one time issue, every time when I list my products on my eBay stores, I have to make sure that I map the SKUs.
Orderhive designed a custom feature for Sachio, wherein he can map the SKUs of any existing/new product across his multiple eBay sites with ease.
“Orderhive made the Inventory management process effortless for me, all I was required to do was to map my SKUs within the channels and the products get easily synced in the Orderhive backend, allowing me to manage Inventory from a single backend.”
Phase 2
Sachio was soon accompanied by his brother, who expanded his business venture, by listing their products on different eBay sites. As they were listing products through multiple eBay accounts, maintaining an accurate level of stocks across all stores became another challenge.
Challenges
Maintaining a consistent level of stock in case of SKU variations
LUFiS got their products listed on different eBay sites specific to a country (eBay.uk, eBay.US, eBay.au) and was managing & uploading his products from different eBay accounts, which created variations in the SKUs across these sites and resulted into inconsistent stock levels.
Customized stock management feature – to boost sales on eBay sites
To fully leverage the eBay listings, online sellers usually display a low level of stock on the eBay sites to create snoopiness among buyers.
LUFiS too wanted to set fixed parameters for the stock level displayed on the eBay sites, which would allow them to permanently show a low stock level to customers and drives them to purchase more.
On top of this, they also wanted an automated process which should work as a contingent plan, so whenever the eBay stock level hits the bottom line, the stock level should automatically refill itself.
Solution
Orderhive achieved stock harmony by mapping SKUs across the eBay channels
Orderhive achieved stock harmony by matching up identical SKUs (by considering the suffix value) from different eBay channels.
So whenever an item is bought, Orderhive automatically updates stock levels across all their eBay channels, which came as a relief to the LUFiS team, as they don’t have to get any more worried about overselling or underselling on any channels.
Advanced stock management feature enabled them to maintain a low level of stock on eBay, which encouraged the customers to buy more.
Orderhive implemented an advanced stock management feature, where LUFiS can maintain a low level of stock on his eBay sites. Once a purchase is done, the physical stock level and eBay stock level gets automatically updated, also, once the eBay stock level goes to 0 unit, the stock level gets automatically updated by the set parameter.
The inventory management operation is graphically shown in the below image:
Results
After Orderhive automated business processes, Sachio witnessed a drastic reduction in man-hours that went into managing inventory, order and shipping processes.
I used to spend 5 hours a day to manage my back-end tasks. With Orderhive managing my daily business processes, I only spend an hour a day to check on new orders & purchases, rest is all taken care by Orderhive. They are also very keen to solve each customer issue and are very responsive to any questions regardless of the pricing plan you choose. I really recommend this tool to anyone selling on Marketplace as well as own online shop.
Looking to buy the best fishing lures? Click here to browse the collection.
