Being a DIY or Fashion retailer you certainly have many opportunities ahead. Etsy, eBay, Amazon, Dawanda, Folksy, Facebook, your own online store… These are just a couple of venues where you can sell your products. As a smart retailer, you have to choose wisely those on which you will focus. People tend to say: A successful seller is everywhere his customers are. That’s a very ideal statement. Being present in all the channels is certainly important, but has its price too. And I’m not talking only about money, but also other (even more valuable?) resource: time. So what actually is the golden mean in this case? Let’s give it a thought.

Pros of multuchannel inventory management

Advantages of selling in multiple channels are quite obvious. More channels = more potential customers = better brand exposition = more sales. Offering your products only in one venue, you always lose chances of hundreds of other sales. Internet reality is inconceivably dispersed. It means you will never reach all your prospects in one place — you have to find (or try to find) all the channels where they spend their time and mark your presence there. Otherwise, you will only reach a small section of clients. And you will find it really difficult to build your brand’s name and recognition.Let me put this another way: Etsy right now guarantees you reaching 55+ million registered users, eBay 160 million, Amazon 270 million. These are just 3 marketplaces. Add to them thousands of others and you will see how much value each channel can bring you. Of course, not every venue will be suitable for your business, but the number of those which will still persists very high.Moreover, all these platforms constantly grow. Looking at statistics in Google Trends you can see that the popularity of them keeps on increasing.

Etsy

Dawanda

Amazon

Cons of multichannel sales

Unfortunately, as it happens in life, things are not that simple. If multichannel was so easy, all the retailers would be selling in all the possible (suitable) channels. But they are not. Why? It just turns out that having products in various venues can be really problematic.First of all, inventory management in this model is a nightmare. You can’t sync all the channels, so you have to log in and out to ALL of them after EVERY sale to change stock levels manually and make sure you won’t sell something you already don’t have in stock. This is very disturbing and time consuming too.Second, you can’t automatically list your products in all desired channels in one go. Another time, you have to log in to all the channels separately, add product descriptions, photos and complete all the forms… How annoying is that!Third, you don’t have all your customers under one roof. This is problematic not only in terms of order fulfilment, but also because it eliminates possibilities of integrated marketing campaigns. Consequently, building relationships with customers and acquiring their loyalty is far more difficult. It means you don’t earn as much as you could.Finally, it is really complicated to understand what. You don’t have all the statistics in one place, so analysing ROI and efficiency of channels is extremely difficult. Given that, smart optimisation of sales is almost impossible.

Pros and Cons summary

Shoplo Omnisale to the rescue

So is it really that bad? Is there nothing you can do to eliminate the problems of multichannel sales? Not exactly. It seems there is a solution for that, which enables you to minimalize all the difficulties and maximise sales. It is called Shoplo Omnisale. How does it work?You only need to add your products to the app once and then can list them in multiple channels (such as for instance Etsy, eBay, Amazon, Dawanda, your online store etc.) with just a couple of clicks. No need for copying, pasting, completing forms etc. — hours of your life saved just like that. What is more, Shoplo Omnisale also allows you to have one inventory system for all the channels and synchronises it automatically in real-time. It means you no longer have to login to all the channels and change stock levels manually. In addition, you have all the orders in one panel, so you can fulfil them easily too. Having all the orders in one place also implies having all your customers under one roof, so you can build relations with them and stimulate their successive purchases, implementing various marketing campaigns.Lastly, there is also something more — Shoplo Omnisale has very well-developed analytic tools and insights. Thanks to them, you can easily evaluate which channels perform the best and optimise your sales. The tool will not only give you insights about the marketplaces you already use, but will also suggest which ones should you add to increase your revenue. Furthermore, you will be provided with some more practical tips. Ever wondered which colour or size of your products will sell the best? Or maybe you have always been courious what time of the year is the best to promote your products? That’s another thing Shoplo Omnisale tells you, having access to a great amount of data from other sellers.Let me know if you have tried it and what your impressions are. I am really curious. Good luck!