How This Company Is Helping Ecommerce Brands Scale and Grow The co-founder of 8fig shares how his platform is helping online sellers plan and execute their growth around their supply-chain needs.
By Jessica Abo Edited by Amanda Breen
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When Yaron Shapira launched 8fig with his co-founders, he wanted to solve one problem: democratizing the ecommerce ecosystem. He sat down with Jessica Abo to discuss how his platform is providing the planning tools to help online sellers plan and execute their growth.
Related: A Beginner's Guide to Building a Profitable Ecommerce Business
Yaron, what can you tell us about 8fig and the role your company plays in serving ecommerce businesses?
Ecommerce is what all of us are doing, all the time. We are buying stuff online. Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, wherever. The goods are being provided to us mostly by third parties, which are very small businesses. These are the ecommerce sellers. They are the real backbone of the ecommerce revolution. These are extremely small businesses, extremely. Two, three, four, five people — that's it. But they need someone to help them to grow. What 8fig is doing is democratizing the ecommerce ecosystem. We create the planning tools to help them plan their growth and execute it.
What would you say are the day-to-day struggles that ecommerce businesses are facing, and how is 8fig helping to solve those problems?
It's all about the supply chain and how long the supply chain is. They need to pay deposits to their manufacturers, then pay the balance; pay for freight, pay for the shipping, handle the extremely long delays in shipping, high costs and changing costs. All their lines of businesses are being changed, and on the fly, as they grow. If you are an ecommerce seller, you can sell online and you can grow extremely fast. You are getting some traction; you are getting some good reviews. As you can grow fast, you can shrink fast. If you grow fast, you need to invest a lot in getting more inventory, but if you shrink, you are stuck with a lot of inventory. This volatile business creates huge threats on a small business that is trying to grow. Now, if that business does not have a planning tool with the ability to adjust the plan as they grow, they'll find it extremely hard to actually grow their businesses.
Related: Ecommerce Acceleration Is the Future. Don't Get Left Behind.
What advice do you have to help ecommerce businesses battle through this wave of inflation?
They need to understand how profitable they are, and if they are profitable. They need to go into the bits and bites of every batch that they are ordering from their manufacturers. What is the cost of shipping? What is the cost of advertising? What are their revenues? When are the revenues coming in? It's a lot of details that they need to know. If they know this calculation, this breakdown, then they can overcome the changes that they are experiencing every day. Delays in manufacturing, defects that might happen to their inventory, delays in shipment, significant increase in shipment costs. If they know the bits and bites of their financing, they will be able to overcome it.
