E-commerce Platform that Hosts Simple Online Stores

Listing Details

Problem: With COVID, many small businesses (restaurants, clothing stores, pharmacies, hardware stores) were forced to sell online. Overnight there were many small entrepreneurs, with 0 experience in web development or e-commerce, struggling to build their online catalogue, or worse, paying absurd amounts of money to software factories or developers to do the work, and be able to continue with the operation.

It is clear that the problem already existed, but now the pain is even stronger.

Market Opportunity: At this point, you may be thinking, Shopify has already been created, and yes, you are right, in part. You see, these small businesses do not need half the things that Shopify (or another) offers, instead, what they need is a simpler product, and why not, cheaper.

How do I know this? It was enough to order a lamp from the nearest hardware store to know its "new" way of selling: messages by WhatsApp. You asked the seller would send you a photo of the product and close the transaction.

But this latent need to sell online, won't it fade away? The question is if you now have a new sales channel, easy to manage, cheaper and, probably, bigger, why should you close it? The change is real, and more robust now.

Solution: A web app that fills the gap between platforms like Shopify and the informal sales through WhatsApp. More easy, faster and more economic. Take a look!

P.S: There's an interesting feature on the app, that I think can be very helpful for restaurants when they come full-operative again. Take a look at the QR-Code feature. You can sell the app just for that. What is this about? They can print a QR-Code from the app, and leave that on restaurant tables, so people come, scan and order. That order goes directly to the kitchen (for example). And with that, you're saving time and effort from waiters, also reducing content and improving the service (delivering sooner).

Business Model Recurring monthly subscription of $4 for the pro plan, or $2 for the basic plan.

What's included in the sale? Everything. Branding, rights, source code, email and some additional assets that can help you to run the business, has user guides and documentation about the sales process.

If you have any questions, LMK!

Q&A 

When did you launch the business? 

Mar 2021

How much did you invest in your startup? 

$700USD approx., to hire a salesman (yup, Argentina is cheap), domain, etc. I'm a Fullstack developer so, the biggest investment here is time.

What is your revenue? 

We were offering it for a short amount of time (2-3 weeks). We get 6 paid customers but just 1 remains with us. The problem was selling too early, without test the platform so, there's was A LOT amount of issues (fixed now).

Competition? 

Pency, we take a lot of things from them. They have +18K stores, and launched just 1 year ago, in Argentina. They're crushing it.

How would you grow it if you stayed within the business? 

Facebook ads campaigns and hire someone else for cold calling.

What technology stack is this product built on? 

Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, AWS.

What kind of support can buyers expect from you post-sale? 

I will do the deployment to your servers. Also, i can work on new features (there's was another developer involved in the development of the app, that can work on too).

Why are you looking to sell? 

I'm starting new projects and, time is limited, also the money 😂

How can the buyer take this project further?

There was couple cool features to include yet. Like push-notifications about product updates/offers. But, the main focus on this stage (I think) should be user acquisition. So, invest in FB Ads can be the next step