Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: LED Light Expert CEO Dara Greaney (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What do you do on the cash flow management side?

Dara Greaney: We finance a lot of it ourselves. We use a third-party company called Resolve. It’s a spin-off of a popular payment platform for B2C. People like the idea of not having to take the risk online. For larger companies, we do that ourselves. That requires us to do some vetting. 

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: LED Light Expert CEO Dara Greaney (Part 1)

Dara spoke with us some years back on his previous venture. This time, he has switched from B2C to B2B and brings insights on the nuances of that sector.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to the new company that you’re doing.

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Uppler CEO Grégoire Chauvin (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In a way, you’re doing PaaS, but I’m talking about something that’s slightly different. For example, Shopify is doing a very good job of this. They have a core e-commerce platform. They’ve opened that up for developers to add to additional apps.

They have an app marketplace built on their platform. That is doing very well. They’ve got a tremendous number of apps that have come together.

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Uppler CEO Grégoire Chauvin (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Put in perspective what’s happening in the set of companies like Shopify and BigCommerce that enable individual e-commerce sites. They seem to be doing very well, which means their merchants are doing well.

Grégoire Chauvin: Every brand needs to have its own website. It’s a must have. Maybe you will spend less marketing effort on that, but you still have this need to have your own e-commerce website. They manage to slash the prices. It’s incredible what they have done.

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Uppler CEO Grégoire Chauvin (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Are your clients mostly in France or are they elsewhere as well?

Grégoire Chauvin: Half of our clients would be in the US and half in Western Europe. 

Sramana Mitra: Can you talk a bit about where you’re seeing adoption? What industry by geography? Is the food and beverage trend global or specific to a particular geography?

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Uppler CEO Grégoire Chauvin (Part 1)

Grégoire discusses two key trends in e-commerce: B2B and marketplaces.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to the company.

Grégoire Chauvin: I’m the Founder of Uppler. We are a software company. We develop software that lets you create your own B2B e-commerce platform. We have different use cases for that. What we create the most are B2B marketplaces.

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Flow Commerce CEO Rob Keve (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What are the dynamics on the logistics side? 

Rob Keve: There is quite a lot there for two reasons. One is consumers have expectations. We’re all sensitized by what the domestic experience is. We all want cheap or free shipping, and we want it to be quick. A lot of that expectation translates into international.

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Flow Commerce CEO Rob Keve (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How do you charge?

Rob Keve: We charge a subscription. We’re a software platform. We should not be a pure revenue share. You pay the subscription and can use it for one country or 200 countries. We have many different modules and you can access all of them as much as you like.

Sramana Mitra: The core business model is all subscription. There is no transaction fee model?