The EGGHEADS analytics system helps suppliers of goods to the Wildberries marketplace eliminate inefficiencies in production and supply, and also use the full potential of the platform
Task
Help suppliers of goods to marketplaces compete on platforms, optimize processes and increase their revenue.
Background and motivation
In the past couple of years, the activity of suppliers on Russian marketplaces has been growing, and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 only catalyzed this process. As a result of the massive move from offline to online sales, competition has skyrocketed, catching many entrepreneurs by surprise—often they don’t have the knowledge and skills to sell online. In the new reality, it has become difficult for suppliers of goods to develop without specialized tools that allow fine-tuning deliveries and sales on marketplaces. Meanwhile, platforms (unlike Western counterparts) do not provide such tools to their customers.
The idea to create a supply management system and marketplace analytics came to the founders of the company while working on the previous project, the Artskills personal gift service. Production in this company was completely controlled by a robot that launched the creation of a personal gift immediately after registering an order on the company’s website. At some point, the founders began consulting other companies on production issues, and one of these clients was supplying Wildberries. Studying his case, they noticed shortcomings in the organization of the supply process to the marketplace. To eliminate these shortcomings, they created EGGHEADS.
Solution
EGGHEADS helps its customers – suppliers of goods to Wildberries – make management decisions based on big data analysis, which is available in just one click, in one working tool. The startup team has developed a hybrid data collection model that includes parsing marketplace pages (automated collection of open data from the site), using information from its reports, API, and accounting systems with customer balances.
implementation
After collecting data, EGGHEADS conducts a financial analysis of the client’s business and identifies weaknesses, as well as gives advice on how and by how much it is possible to increase net profit in his case, what specific actions should be taken with the product card on the marketplace (the effect of discounts on earnings from goods and so on). The company also asks the client for data on the balance of goods, examines the rhythm of his work, studies his accounting systems and methods for delivering goods to the marketplace warehouse.
The analytical system shows which actions affect the increase and decrease in the issuance of goods. It tracks a promising product from the supplier’s competitors and helps the latter to bring its product to the top of the search results. The company also considers revenue and lost revenue for all brands on Wildberries, due to which the supplier can understand whether it is worth entering a certain category or not, whether the competitor’s offer satisfies the demand for a particular group of goods.
EGGHEADS does not provide its service autonomously, but works to integrate all the tools into the client’s business processes. The owner or one of the top managers of the company (for example, the commercial director) during the training process must go through a full implementation cycle, consisting of seven online meetings, each of which takes from one and a half to two hours. The people responsible for the processes related to the company’s work on the marketplaces do voluminous homework after each stage. The implementation process takes from one to two months, and it necessarily involves not only those involved in analytics and supply, but also the production department and the purchasing department. After the implementation process, the accounting department is connected to the client, holding one or two meetings every month.
Without the EGGHEADS tool, the supplier can plan deliveries himself by studying WIldberries reports on sales, balances, and turnover of goods. However, such analytics does not allow more accurately, by the day, to assess the demand for goods.
The results
After the closure of Artskills and the reformatting of the project into a seller on Wildberries, the company in just six months from scratch reached a turnover of ₽13 million per month and got into the top 1000 marketplace suppliers.
Plans and prospects
EGGHEADS plans to start working with the Ozon marketplace in the third quarter of 2021, and then enter SberMegaMarket, Lamoda, Yandex.Market and AliExpress. The company also plans to launch a product for small businesses in the near future for a small check and with limited functionality. One of the main goals is to make the supplier workflow efficient and at the same time connect to new marketplaces with a few clicks.