The Situation
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the businesses opted to keep shipping prices stable for its customers by strategically navigating the industry disruption and fulfilment challenges, including absorbing additional costs rather than passing them on to purchase-ready consumers.
After primarily working in the B2B space, the management team says they realised it was time to expand their offerings to more consumers via marketplaces.
However, this meant that there would be a manifold increase in the workload. This led the team to search for and collaborate with an automated solution to help list products correctly, manage inventory, and optimise both Parallel Deals and Goslash’s presence on marketplaces.
After unsuccessfully implementing what Manocha describes as “a cheap option” to launch on eBay and other marketplaces, Parallel Deals and Goslash report that they decided to move forward and formulate a crisis plan.
“Too much of what that company told us turned out to be sugar-coated,” recalls Manocha, emphasising that the mismanagement of their product listings and limited agility caused the businesses to fall short of marketplace requirements.
The difficult experience convinced the businesses to pull back, re-examine in-house operations and resume the search for another software solution, according to Manocha. At that time, the COVID-19 pandemic loomed large on the global stage, altering the e-commerce industry permanently.
“During lockdowns, we were doing all product updates in-house, working on 300-400 products a day,” Manocha recalls. “It was a big learning curve to work on our in-house operations and decide how to approach marketplaces, too.”
In order to achieve broader brand awareness and a surge in growth, Parallel Deals and Goslash decided to partner with a trustworthy ally.
The Solution
Although Parallel Deals and Goslash were already well-established in the market, the businesses had multidimensional layers of dispatch locations interwoven with product listings. Their team reports that they needed proper organisation and centralisation for more efficiency and scalability. Manocha says Rithum was the obvious choice because of its centralized multichannel commerce, easy-to-use interface platform paired with its substantial capacity to manage complex data.
In addition to using the Rithum platform, Parallel Deals says it decided to invest in Rithum’s Managed Services for Marketplaces to help re-establish and cultivate healthier relationships with the marketplaces deemed critical to its business. In fact, Manocha says he immediately discovered the many benefits of having direct access to professionals with the background and expertise to help his team reach their goals.
The Results
After partnering with Rithum in March 2020, Parallel Deals and Goslash leveraged the Rithum Self-Service Plus solution and then expanded its support as the businesses prepared to launch marketplaces. In October 2020, they moved to Rithum’s Managed Services for Marketplaces to swiftly and accurately scale their business as they joined four separate marketplaces. According to Manocha, sales on those marketplaces soared with the strong synergy between the e-commerce management experience of Parallel Deals and Goslash and the omnichannel expertise by Rithum. The businesses navigated successful starts and began executing its business plan to deliver goods on time and increase the number of satisfied customers.
“Rithum’s Managed Services team helped us make our relationships with marketplaces stronger,” Manocha said. During an eight-month period, the businesses report that revenue saw constant growth, resulting in a 165% YOY on marketplaces managed through Rithum. The businesses confirm profitable entries in its initial marketplace ventures prompted Parallel Deals and Goslash to add to its arsenal, which grew to include listings on eBay, Kogan, Dick Smith, TheMarket, Newegg, Onceit and 1-day.co.nz.
As of present time, 40% of the business’s revenue was coming through sales managed within the Rithum platform.
Manocha describes it as “enormous” growth that allowed Parallel Deals and Goslash to increase their product offerings. Its catalogue went from a maximum of 12,000 SKUs before Rithum to more than 170,000 SKUs across 300+ categories within 16 months of starting with Rithum. And Manocha says he was delighted to invest in more resources and respond to the growth.
All achievements to this point have been organic, according to Manocha, without marketing, promotions or ads.
“Without Rithum, we couldn’t have made the connections necessary through our sales channels to achieve such rapid growth in visibility and sales,” he says. “We see the Managed Services team as a part of our team, and it’s clear they share our goals for success.”
Manocha says one of the most unexpected positive results was the ease of sending curated data feeds to join new, highly curated and gated marketplaces. And as Parallel Deals and Goslash navigated launches and increased the depth of its presence on each marketplace, the team confirmed they found more options in account management, access to promotions and other benefits. With Rithum’s support.
Manocha adds, “With revenue increasing each month, we are excited about the future. In our current growth phase, we are actively working with our supply network and are in the process of expanding to the UK and other parts of Europe in Q4. Partnering with Rithum has fueled our expansion to marketplaces globally.”
