As sales continued to increase, Guidarelli suggested the company expand to sell on eBay. However, the first couple of years on the platform proved difficult, especially with inventory management and listing accuracy.
As businesses scrambled to find new streams of revenue during the financial crisis of 2007-2009, J&M Golf elected to start offering their products on Amazon. Other golf stores were shutting down, and J&M Golf did not want to fall victim to the crashing markets. Even though they didn’t fully understand everything that went into their e-commerce expansion the wholesale golf distributors began selling their selection of golf products on Amazon.
J&M’s e-commerce team consisted of just two employees at the time, including Josh Guidarelli, who had originally been “just a regular employee, shipping wholesale orders”.
Guidarelli, now the e-commerce manager at J&M, says those early days growing their business on Amazon were quite a learning experience. The golf company’s business picked up speed quickly on Amazon, so they kept adding more and more items to the sales channel. At one point they were even putting placeholder tracking numbers on orders, just to confirm shipments.
As sales continued to increase, Guidarelli suggested the company expand to sell on eBay. However, the first couple of years on the platform proved difficult, especially with inventory management and listing accuracy.
Eventually, a UPS representative reached out to the golf business and encouraged them to work with a well-known e-commerce management platform.
Guidarelli said they agreed with the suggestion, despite not knowing any information about the suggested platform or doing any price checking for similar platforms.
“We just ran with whatever UPS told us about the recommendation. We said, ‘Okay, we're making a lot of money up front. We can afford this, and it’s a company that's going to manage all of our inventory, and manage all of our repricing for us.’”
Unfortunately, J&M Golf proceeded to have more challenges with the new platform, especially whenever their team needed customer support.
Because they were still fairly new to the e-commerce world at the time, Guidarelli said they were having trouble with new terminologies and getting listings up online quickly and accurately.
“We literally had no idea — we were like little kids jumping into this big ocean. And I had no idea what was going on, what we needed to do. So I would email them about listing errors, that I'm not understanding them, and it would take a very long time for them to respond to me.”
To top it off, those responses were typically so vague that Guidarelli still wouldn’t have an answer, so he’d submit a question again, which would eat up at least another day of work.
The responses they received from their provider were typically so vague that Guidarelli still wouldn’t have an answer and would have to submit a question again, which would take at least another day of work.
“Their answers on errors of why a product didn't get listed came across like code writing. That's when the frustration of not having good customer support began.”
The inability to contact their support desk with questions via phone and all of the time waiting for help was starting to prove costly for J&M.
Since the e-commerce platform was also considerably more expensive than other platforms, J&M Golf began searching for a quality competitor at a better price.
In a stroke of good luck for Guidarelli and J&M Golf, a sales representative from SellerActive called the company one day and offered a demo. Guidarelli was immediately impressed with the “Add Product” feature of the SellerActive software, and how easy it was to get products online for sale.
“It blew my mind how quickly I could list an item, then how quick it lists on Amazon and on eBay. Within like 10-15 minutes, it’s live on those marketplaces. With our previous platform, it'd be like a day.”
J&M Golf made sure to give enough notice the next time their auto-renewal came up, so they could make the switch to SellerActive’s less expensive multichannel management software.
Since then, it’s been smooth sailing for Guidarelli and the J&M e-commerce team. In fact, making the switch to SellerActive's multichannel management platform proved as beneficial as hiring a new employee for J&M Golf.
“We're doing more volume now than we did last year with (their previous platform). And SellerActive hasn’t missed a beat. We haven't overlooked a single item because things were not communicated quick enough. And that has definitely secured our faith in SellerActive to know you’ve got our back, even at our highest points.”
In particular, J&M Golf has been very pleased with:
Guidarelli also speaks highly of the support he’s received from his account manager, John Gorman.
“The customer service is like night and day, compared to our last platform. I mean, it’s unbelievable how quick I get customer support and have something either fixed, or pushed through, to make things start running back to normal. With SellerActive it’s like we hired another employee.”
If you’re looking to expand your business and sell on various online channels, a multichannel management tool like SellerActive can help. We offer a comprehensive inventory management software with dedicated support at a competitive price.
Our multi-channel inventory management tool helps you manage your inventory and helps you keep up with shopping trends. Learn more about our services and reach out today to sign up for a 14-day free trial!