eBay customers build the UK’s largest online parcel empire
Last Updated on Thursday, 29 July 2010 04:20 Written by a2e Thursday, 29 July 2010 04:20
A company in Bolton, that was created to serve eBay traders, has grown into the biggest online parcel delivery service in the UK.
An online parcel delivery was the brain-child of serial wheeler-dealer Fil Adams-Mercer, who set up Parcel2Go in 2002 primarily to serve eBay traders requiring UK and international courier services.
Mr Adams-Mercer, whose business career began selling bruised fruit, has developed Parcel2Go.com into a £16m a year business with over 600,000 customers.
The key to Parcel2Go’s success has been the heavy investment in a sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) system. This has cost £2.5m to create, and a further £30,000 a month “and blood, sweat and tears” to run.
Mr Adams-Mercer has designed the company to take and co-ordinates orders that are then fulfilled by Federal Express, UPS and City Link.
“Other companies chase parcels,” he said. “We chase people who may be delivering parcels in the future.”
He is also growing a niche market in the USA. Most American websites will not deliver goods outside the US because of customs bureaucracy. Mr Adams-Mercer has bought a Miami warehouse which British traders can use as their “address” when buying from American sites. Parcel2Go will then arrange parcel delivery from the US.
He is currently studying the possibility of setting up delivery franchises in Spain and France.
Fil Adams-Mercer starred as one of the ‘Secret Millionaires’ in the last series of Channel 4’s show. He was dispatched to a cramped, dirty terraced house in Doncaster to experience what it’s really like to live on Jobseekers’ Allowance.
Mr Adams-Mercer, who is a cancer survivor, donated funds to the Firefly Cancer Charity and other local good causes in Doncaster.
Read The Rest Of This...CRM prominent on Google Apps marketplace
Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 July 2010 10:40 Written by External Post Wednesday, 28 July 2010 10:40
CRM (customer relationship management) software has established a significant foothold on Google’s Apps Marketplace since its launch in March, according to an official blog post this week.
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Salesforce.com lands Facebook as a customer
Last Updated on Thursday, 22 July 2010 09:00 Written by External Post Thursday, 22 July 2010 09:00
Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff talked so much about the Facebook imperative that he landed the social-networking giant as a customer. Salesforce.com said Wednesday that it has landed Facebook as a CRM (customer relationship management) customer for its
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eBay Announces 2010 Star Developer Award Winners
Last Updated on Wednesday, 9 June 2010 11:20 Written by a2e Wednesday, 9 June 2010 11:20
eBay Inc. announced the recipients of the 2010 Star Developer Awards, recognizing third-party developers who have driven innovative solutions that help streamline the selling process on eBay.
The Star Developer Awards are presented annually to recognize the talent and solutions of members of the eBay Developers Program. The eBay Developers Program, established in 2000, is a community of more than 112,000 developers who utilize the program’s standards-based, easy-to-use development platform. These third-party developers have access to the eBay marketplace, enabling them to seamlessly integrate their ideas and e-commerce tools.
Many of the winners take advantage of Open eBay, the company’s platform that allows developers to integrate applications directly in the eBay.com interface where U.S. sellers can subscribe to and use them.
“eBay’s developer community continues to create innovative applications on the eBay platform that help improve the experience for buyers and margins for sellers, while driving profitability for themselves,” said Sri Shivananda, senior director of eBay’s developer program. “The eBay Star Developer Award winners have built powerful applications that bring new ways of doing business to the eBay marketplace.”
2010 award winners include:
eCommSource™ by Cloud Conversion™, a complete customer relationship management (CRM) solution that enables eBay sellers around the world to manage all customer service operations from a single salesforce.com Service Cloud account. Available on the salesforce.com AppExchange
Early Adopter: Quantity Manager, an automatic listing management tool for eBay sellers, and Price Spectre, a dynamic pricing agent that monitors competitors’ prices and adjusts a subscriber’s listing price accordingly, by NullApps
Most Innovative: Outright, an application that automates eBay sales and expense tracking for more efficient tax preparation, by Outright
Rapid Evolution: Vendio Reviser, a bulk revision solution for updating large numbers of live listings, by Vendio
Service to the Developer Community: David Kronenwetter (exdwh) of Experimenter’s Discount Warehouse
2010 runners-up include:
DSR Rockstar: PhiConnect Return Service, to accept and manage return requests and inquiries online, by PhiConnect.com
Early Adopter: ChannelAdvisor Premium Marketplaces, a solution that eases selling on eBay by automating tedious, day-to-day tasks from inventory management to order fulfillment, by ChannelAdvisor
Most Innovative: GarageSale iPhone application by iwascoding
Rapid Evolution: ShipSaver Insurance, an app that allows eBay sellers to quickly and easily add shipping insurance to their sold items, by InkFrog
Service to the Developer Community: Alan Capesius of AlsSoftware
The annual eBay Developers Conference 2010 takes place June 8 to 10 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. To view eBay’s App Center, visit http://applications.ebay.com/
