Good news is coming from ChannelAdvisor, especially bearing in mind the recession. For the first time since the company was founded in 2001, they’ve been profitable for a full year, with $2.6 million in bookings and 229 new customer additions in the last quarter alone.
It’s great to see them turn the corner, after what can only be described as a long slog to profitability. As a Software-as-a-Service company, their income is generated by a small percentage of their merchants turnover, so the upfront investment to build solutions was always going to be greater than immediate income. Continually adding new customers and retaining existing merchants is key to their future profits.
ChannelAdvisor aren’t sitting on their laurals though, they’ve just released their next generation Amazon solution in the US. Highlights include automatic ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) discovery for new listings, dynamic population of Amazon’s item classification keyword requirements, a revised management dashboard and full integration with Amazon FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon). Hopefully we’ll see this rolled out for merchants selling on Amazon UK in the future.
I have to say if you think listing on eBay is hard work, filling out title, descriptions, prices, categories and item specifics it’s easy compared to getting products listed on Amazon. The new tools should cut the workload for merchants wishing to upload inventory in bulk and move listing product to a sales function, rather than involving retailers IT departments every time a change is required.
It’s been a year since the final round of investment of $20m cash into ChannelAdvisor and investors can now breathe a sigh of relief and sit back to wait for future profits to roll in. The stock market conditions probably aren’t ideal for floating a company at the moment, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this was the next step in ChannelAdvisors future plans.
Disclosure: ChannelAdvisor advertise with TameBay
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