ChannelUnity multichannel management software

ChannelUnity is a well kept secret with the online community, based in Manchester UK, ChannelUnity boasts around 400 clients worldwide and despite their UK location; ChannelUnity prides themselves on their high customer service levels to all their international customers.

What do ChannelUnity do?

ChannelUnity are a complete multichannel management service that allow online retailers to take existing listings from their current online store and grants them the ability to create listings, sync stock, update pricing, enable re-pricing and import orders back and forth between their cart and a multitude of international online marketplaces.

Who are ChannelUnity?

Their executive team consists of:

MARK NEWBY – CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Following a freelance project in 2009, Mark had the initial idea for a cloud based platform connecting into multiple marketplaces worldwide.

MATTHEW ROSS MSC BSC – CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER

The ‘Wozniak’ to Marks ‘Jobs’, Matthew enabled the concept of ChannelUnity to become reality with his knowledge of programming.

Along side their executive team there is a support team, who have extensive knowledge in all aspects of online commerce, as well as on onboarding team, who take care of customers on the free trial.

RICHARD GERRARD – VP, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Richard joined us in 2013 having spent a vast career of more than 30 years working for enterprise sales organisations in the US & UK.

How did ChannelUnity start out?

In 2009, Mark Newby was asked to develop an integration between a retailers online store and their Amazon marketplace account, enabling the retailer to manage orders from their website alongside their Amazon orders, synchronise stock levels and post back shipments.

First came “Camiloo Global Amazon Integration for Magento (CAIM)”

After a few months of working on this project in evenings at weekends while balancing a full time job – and with the finished system in happy use by the retailer, Mark realised the potential for other retailers to benefit from the same automation. Taking the entrepreneurial leap of faith, Mark spent the following 8 weeks documenting and refining the solution beyond the original requirements. In October 2009, Mark advertised this for sale as the Camiloo Global Amazon Integration for Magento (CAIM) and, having never sold anything before, was unprepared for the response for the retail community.

One week passed, and just as Mark was beginning to think the selling price would need to be cut drastically in order for anyone to consider purchasing the software, the first sale came through. Another week passed, and the second sale came in. Then 3 days later sale number three, 2 days later sale number four… From nowhere, a business was taking off!

By now, Mark had an extra set of hands to help him in the form of his partner, Matt Ross. Matt initially led a double life, working for his day job until home-time before becoming CTO in the evenings, using his greater programming knowledge to strengthen the robustness and scalability of Mark’s Amazon Module.

A year after Mark started the company, Matt was able to join full time, and the duo set about developing version 2.0 of their solution, pulling 36 hour days to support existing customers and develop new features side-by-side. Hard work paid off, as by June 2011, The CAIM solution had been purchased by more than 450 retailers worldwide with minimal marketing spend and the business was able to recruit part time customer support staff.

But Mark and Matt knew there was a lot more potential.

With the help of seed funding from The North West Fund, Mark and Matt embarked on aggressive growth plan, recruiting a team of developers to create a platform with a goal of helping retailers on any shopping cart connect to any marketplace worldwide. An ambitious goal, but one that Mark and Matt knew there was a hunger for, having been contacted by retailers wishing to sell onto other marketplaces such as eBay or on other shopping cart platforms such as Bigcommerce.

ChannelUnity

After 12 months development, on June 1st 2012 ChannelUnity was born. Within days more than 250 retailers had signed up to try the new creation. By October 2012 support for the first eBay marketplaces began to arrive on the platform and by January 2013, connectivity in Buy.com (now Rakuten) had arrived. May 2013 saw the business launch a radical new pricing model enabling start ups to benefit from its solution for the very first time thanks due to a low entry cost of just £15 per month.

June 2013 saw the business add support for the popular Bigcommerce shopping cart solution, doubling the potential audience of ChannelUnity overnight to more than 300,000 retailers. This, combined with the experience of Richard Gerrard, who joined the team as Business Development Director in September 2013, led to a record 41 new paying customers joining the platform in October 2013, with new enterprise client agreements expanding the already broad spectrum of customers in the ever growing user-base of the business.

Renaming to ChannelUnity Limited in the same month, the business continued to grow rapidly throughout the remainder of 2013 and into 2014. July 2014 saw ChannelUnity launch a new website, a new brochure and two new pricing tiers aimed at SME and volume retailers. The future for ChannelUnity is very bright – both for the business itself and for the hundreds of retailers worldwide who trust its innovations daily to grow their businesses.

Who is ChannelUnity suitable for?

In response to their customer’s feedback, ChannelUnity recently re-launched their pricing structure to accommodate to the vast range of customers needs.

ChannelUnity’s ~flex plan has been tailored for low turnover sellers or startup companies that are looking to test the water with sites like Amazon and eBay. Cost £15 per month plus 1% of turnover.

ChannelUnity’s fixed plan is more suited to volume sellers (with a turn over of up to £1m per annum). This is our most popular plan at the moment, as it’s very popular with sellers who already have an established presence on both there online stores, and third-party market places but who are looking for a more practical solution on the day to day running of their business. Cost £349 per month, 0% of turnover.

ChannelUnity’s Plus+ plan is a bespoke plan created for our enterprise customers – a fully flexible and customizable account to ensure that our customers are making the most of the services available to them. Cost on application.

Which marketplaces and shopping carts do ChannelUnity support?

Short answer, all eBay, Amazon and Rakuten (Play.com) marketplaces you’re likely to trade on.

<tdcolspan=”5″>Plus API documentation for custom websites, other shopping carts and ERP solutions to be integrated

What makes ChannelUnity stand out from our competitors?

The support team at ChannelUnity pride themselves on their high customer service levels. Often when new customers move over from their old providers to us, the first thing they comment on is out exceptional customer service levels.

Along side this, ChannelUnity say that they are currently the only multichannel management service that fully intergrates with Rakuten platforms, with several customers already successfully selling on Play.com and Rakuten.com

What does the future hold for ChannelUnity ?

We’re really excited to be launching new market place integrations later on this summer, including, Sears Marketplace, Newegg Marketplace and Sellers at Tesco Direct.

Find out more with a free trial

ChannelUnity offer a free 14 day trial so that you can get to know their product and service. You can sign up on their website.