Will over at Linnworks has written a great guest piece for us about how diversifying your business can help your business thrive:
How diversification can help your business grow
“I suppose my formula might be: dream, diversify and never miss an angle”
Walt Disney
In my role as Business Development Executive for Linnworks, I speak to hundreds of e-commerce business every week. From small one-person bedroom sellers to large corporations with thousands of products and hundreds of staff. Regardless of the size, one of the biggest concerns is the constantly changing trading environment, with new stringent restrictions being placed on sellers by the larger marketplaces, business owners are getting increasingly worried about placing “all their eggs in one basket”.
The problem with only one marketplace
At Linnworks we have seen plenty of companies who have been closed down over night due to trading restrictions placed on them by marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay because they have fallen foul of one of the many rules these marketplaces maintain and don’t have a back-up plan or alternative selling channel to work with.
The new and emerging marketplaces
At Linnworks we recommend exploring and embracing marketplaces away from the traditional big three (Amazon, eBay & company website). Marketplaces such as Flubit and Tesco are growing quickly and gaining more market share from the traditional big platforms all the time. These marketplaces are still growing and in their early stages but there is definite advantages for any early-adopters.
At Linnworks we recognised marketplaces outside of the big three such as:
- Flubit
- Tesco (invite only)
- Rakuten
- Google Shop
Different location, different customers
If a company is not interested in risking investment in an emerging and new marketplace which can be perceived as a high risk investment we recommend they investigate a lower-risk option of an established marketplace in different parts of the world. Marketplaces such as C-Discount and Ali-Baba are marketplaces with massive customer share in the Francophone and Asian marketplaces respectively so offer access to new customers that otherwise companies would have never had contact with.
Linnworks often suggests marketplaces such as:
- C-Discount (French)
- Ali-baba (Asia)
- Fnac (French)
- Alegro (Polish)
- Sears (United States)
Diversify all of your business operations
Diversification is crucial to any business to ensure stability, this is the case when thinking of marketplaces but is applicable across a number of different aspects of business such as product lines, suppliers and delivery choices.
Choosing the correct courier service has become a crucial part of any e-commerce business. Ensuring prompt, cost-effective delivery has become essential to the long term success of any business. With the rise of alternative courier options, gone are the days of the one service for all products. The most successful businesses have a wide range of choices for shipping ensuring the best service possible for all of their customers.
How to manage so much diversity?
Handling diversification in your business can be a daunting task, at Linnworks we recommend ensuring all of these marketplaces and couriers can be managed from a single system, by using a multi-channel system such as Linnworks, companies can save themselves countless man-hours while still expanding their business.
