Brightpearl’s Commerce Acceleration Platform now offers integrated and automated inventory and listings management to sellers on eBay.co.uk and eBay.com.
Brightpearl and eBay have been engaged in a multi-phase project to develop, beta test, release and co-promote these services to eBay sellers.
eBay came to Brightpearl recognising that their solution gives a really solid foundation for retailers in a certain segments, but wanted to see listing management as part of the Brightpearl solution. Brightpearl have offered order and inventory synch for about 18 months, but are now ready to unveil their new integrated eBay listing tool.
The eBay integration is significant on two counts, it provides a time-saving efficiency boost for retailers who want to list more SKUs on eBay and eBay and Brightpearl will co-promote this to eBay sellers in the UK, a strong sign of eBay’s commitment to Brightpearl’s platform.
Is Brightpearl suitable for me?
There are a ton of channel management solutions out there and they all serve different needs and businesses. We thought we’d grill the Brightpearl team and see if we could tie down which retailers Brightpearl is best suited for.
I managed to get hold of James Scott in Brightpearl’s US offices and identified several key points – if your business matches more than a couple then you should take a look at the Brightpearl solution.
- Brightpearl is suitable for small to mid-sized multi-channel retailers.
- Typically Brightpearl works well for companies with an annual turnover approaching £1m rising to around £6m ($2M – $10M)
- If you have 5-20 employees then your business is almost certainly sufficiently complex that Brightpearl can assist in simplifying many business processes.
- To benefit from Brightpearl you will be selling in multiple retail channels. Your channels could be online or offline, physical stores, web store(s) and online marketplaces (eBay, Amazon)
- Whilst your business may be primarily retail, Brightpearl is particularly suited for those that have a secondary wholesale part to their business.
- Possibly the most important attribute is that your business growing rapidly and experiencing growing pains – especially the complexity of managing inventory, orders, customer and financial data across multiple channels.
What can Brightpearl do for you
Traditionally one of the biggest pain points for eBay sellers has been managing their eBay inventory and listings. Sellers want to sell more stock on eBay, but until now, the listing process has been time consuming and the more stock you have listed the more complex the inventory management becomes.
Importantly, managing eBay inventory and listings directly from within Brightpearl means that sellers have access to all of Brightpearl’s other powerful features, including real-time profitability visibility by SKU and by customer, automated accounting, and the ability to integrate and manage inventory, customer data, financials and orders to make better business decisions.
Brightpearl Accounts
Brightpearl is almost unique in that alongside channel management the accounting functions happen almost invisibly. Each time an order is placed and shipped Brightpearl updates your accounts, that means at any single moment in time you can check your profit and loss and you’ll never again have to sit down to update your accounts for VAT, Tax Returns or Management Reports.
If currently like many eBay businesses you do your accounts manually on spreadsheets then you’ll definitely benefit from Brightpearl. As with many of Brightpearl’s features, the accounting function really comes into it’s own if you have multiple locations or different business units. Once you’re using Brightpearl you can see your financials across all sites and channels and your accounts are always as up to date as your last sale.
Get started with Brightpearl
Whilst eBay are going to identify those retailers with highest potential to benefit and will make these businesses aware of Brightpearl solution, if you have a lot of products to sell and can’t get them easily listed or struggle to manage them, then you’re welcome to approach Brightpearl direct.
22 Responses
Any one tired this, How does it compare to linnworks ?
Bit off saying for 1 million turnover and over only.
£1m rising to around £6m? Alas, not quite yet.
1 mill turn over on ebay.
Would it be worth it?
I think not.
A £1 million turnover on eBay is a long way off, and undesireable, for lots of ecommerce SMEs. But it’s not unusual for many either.
I think that small, clever, nimble sellers can make good profits and fine livings on a smaller turnover. Actually, those are the sellers I love best.
You may also be surprised how much even seemingly smaller ecommerce retail businesses turnover.
If you start expanding a little, taking commercial premises on and staff, £1m turnover isn’t unusual online. And anyway, turnover vs profit is a big difference.
I think the point of this article is to explore. What are you doing, what do you need and how do you grow if you want to?
It’s striking how much the ecommerce world has changed in this past year. And providers like Brightpearl are at the vanguard.
If it’s not for you, that’s cool. But it will be just the ticket for others.
Another day another online seller management software system to check out here on Tamebay!
There is unfortunately no public review site that compares the various order/inventory management systems available in sufficient detail that we have ever found.
So making any informed comparison is very difficult indeed and you have to do the hard yards on numerous sites to get any decent data or feedback on user experience.
They do group into tiers depending on your business size/core functionality and their payment method but after that it critically depends on your business profile and their strengths and weaknesses down in the detail.
Even the implementation of stock control varies greatly and can be a killer for some businesses (e.g. fashion with multiple variants)
You need to get at least a months free trial to assess any of them if you can.
Also greatly recommend Matt’s website ‘thelastdropofink’ which has some really good stuff in there if you look carefully.
Failing that you will have to pay a consultant (like Matt) for their knowledge to help you select the right system for your business – the really detailed comparison info on strengths & weaknesses is not usually provided free of charge.
Many sellers have wasted thousands of pounds before they got it right – or at least good enough!
I had an appalling time with Brightpearl – despite it appearing to be the solution to my problems and being promised everything under the sun by the guy who did the demo, the vast majority of what I wanted simply wasn’t delivered – over a year since I paid for a year’s subscription upfront we have pretty much taken the decision to pull the plug and go elsewhere.
If you were starting a business from scratch it might be worth looking at – if you have data you need to import into the site and you are expecting any help, guidance or support then I would look elsewhere.
cheers
Jason
Hi,
I’ve had a very positive experience with Brightpearl. It’s allowing me to grow my business from much less than £1M to, well, I expect to have £1M+ next year if not this year.
I list on Amazon, eBay and websites. The more I list my 300+ products, the more inventory (or SKUs) I have to manage and I can’t keep track on an xsheet anymore. I started using Brightpearl 3 months ago – it’s excellent. It’s intuitive, well thought out and comprehensive.
My experience of tools/systems is that they can be both a blessing and a curse. So many are big on claims but day to day use throws up so many glitches that you feel like tearing your hair out. Last week, frustrated with Turbo Lister, I finally gave up and reverted to listing one by one through the browser.
Then I got wind of the latest Brightpearl update – publishing directly from Brightpearl to eBay. I did my first one straight away, not even taking time to read the help (hey, it’s intuitive) and listed one product – it worked. I then did another with varients – it worked again. Brilliant I thought, this will save me so much time.
Yes, there are some issues to be ironed out, but I’m not put off. You see, I look at this as a first release (of eBay module) with robust performance inevitable as per the rest of the system.
Nobody likes long posts/emails so I’ll stop now. Just to say, I’ve no vested interest in Brightpearl, other than their success is my success, and my positive bias is purely down to a positive experience – this is a killer app!
Bernard McNamee, CosyHomeStore.
As a Linnworks user of over 3 years its good to see the whole area of inventory management raising its standards.
What I love about Linnworks is that it works, and its a fixed reasonable price. When you are stuck, you can pick up a phone and speak to an English based technical representative. It saves me at least 2 members of staff. Its been part of my business in its initial growth phase
If anyone is interested in Linnworks, I would urge you to look at the competition (Channel Advisor, Eseller Pro, Channel Grabber, Bright Pearl), and then speak to Linnworks. I have had a couple of businesses of varying sizes come to my warehouse in Swindon to view the software in great detail. This I am happy to do, and it does not cost you a thing. This is the strategy LW want – they are open to people really exploring it.
When I looked at ChannelAdvisor many years ago, they would not let me visit a live customer or see the software being used, other than a 1 product sandbox. I wonder if BrightPearl offer this service, or is James adopting the same business model as he did when he was boss of ChannelAdvisor?
Some of the [good] features James talks about have been in Linnworks for many months, under their Linnlive system….
Linnworks was the first and I think is still the only company than has integrated Royal Mail Dispatch Manager (Online version) – allowing you to print off stamps with one or two clicks. Does Brightpearl offer this at the moment?
John
When I started using BP my turnover was around 80K – it was just me then so this was fine. I did however want to expand, feel in control my orders and get more time off!
Over the 3 years of running brightpearl I’ve increased the companies turnover x4 and now have 3 employees – I’ve also reduced my work hours dramatically.
Along the way it feels like Brightpearl has been updating and evolving with me. Their latest developments have been the most exciting for me so far.
After selling purely on my website, I’ve just started using their Ebay & Amazon integration – it works very nicely (I waited a year for all bugs etc to be ironed out and now it works a dream) – straight from the sale, to purchase, customer contact/invoice, into accounts and done. I never even see this process happening. I can focus on other areas of the business like how to sell more of them!
There are few features and integrations in Brightpearl that I don’t use. The good thing is I don’t really feel I need to – I know they’re there. I just like the knowledge that if I ever need to make a quick business decision to expand/reduce/make a shift I can do it easily whenever needed.
For anyone who doesn’t get along with BP initially I would suggest really getting stuck in on a practice system first and talking to people who have had lots of experience with Brightpearl to help set it up in your free month. I personally don’t like the idea (and refuse!) to pay for specialised support for a product of this price – but it’s something to really consider if you’re starting fresh – if I could have afforded it would have saved me a lot of time and made more of a difference early on.
As you can imagine getting a central system to run your business efficiently needs time and patience. But I do feel that focusing my energy on using Brightpearl has played a huge part in gaining the profits and freedom I enjoy now.