Ask an Expert Dec 15: Anurag Avula, Jeremy Khoo & Rachel Chan

[PayPal_Luna]

Hello there and welcome to our first Ask an Expert session!

Once in a while we sit down with e-commerce experts across the region, and this time we are excited to have some of the most experienced and inspirational online business owners around! Quick bio:

• Anurag Avula: Ex Paypal APAC Senior Director, currently CEO & CoFounder at Shopmatic Just about the best person for you to ask technical & design questions about online launch, operation and growth.

• Jeremy Khoo*: Founder & CEO at Dressabelle, Jeremy is well-versed in customer service and has previously been featured in this Paypal Headstart article.

• Rachel Chan: Founder & CEO at LIVE3LY, and director of Eggsplore. Having been in the online space for >15 years, Rachel is your digital solutions guru. You can read more about her in this Headstart article.

* Unfortunately Jeremy is not currently available to answer questions, but he shall be able to response in January. 

The three experts will be around on this thread to answer questions in the next 2-3 weeks. They will also sit down in a panel discussion later that will be filmed and uploaded.

Before we get started, I have a small surprise for you: We are giving away 10x US$100 Google Adwords vouchers to people with the most interesting questions! So you will be rewarded for getting your problems solved, how does that sound?

Detailed T&Cs for the giveaways are found here. If you haven’t read the board sticky post, I encourage you to do so. Now let’s get started!

[tristrella]

Hi there, so I have been struggling competing with major job boards across the Philippines in particular.

The return of investment has been extremely slow, and wouldn't be enough yet to cover monthly operating costs.

Most companies has been given discount codes but still hesitant to go over the site and post some listings.

The site has been running paid ads from major job board sites and social media network ad campaigns.

How do you keep companies get committed on making listings on the site?

[Hikkie]

[GDN]

Which areas that GDN can help on e-commerce website?
What are the key performance indicators(kpi) to measure and lead to optimization?

[GlutenfreeSG]

This is a question for Mr. Jeremy Khoo.

We're focusing on importing numerous products that have never been sold before in the local market. This helps give us an edge over our competitors, and also gives our store a unique touch.

However, as we have only just started, we're practically digging into our own pockets to bring in these products for now. It also doesn't help that a lot of them are brand new products/concepts here, meaning that there are no other brands that produces the same item.

We have been bringing in small quantities of these products to test the market since we started about 3 months ago, and have built up to over 300 exclusive products so far. But our sales are still relatively weak, so it's very difficult for us to gauge which items or flavors are more popular with the local audiences.

(E.g. we have 2 frequent customers who keep purchasing the same products several times a month, but it doesn't necessarily  mean that the product will sell well with the rest of the population.)

Now we have a dilemma; should we continue bringing in so many varieties at a loss, or should we focus only on the products that have been moving; even though they are only being bought by a handful of customers?

Have you encountered this problem when you first started out? How have you worked around it? If not, do you have any suggestions for us?

[ozzi101]

dear mr. Anurag Avula, I want to ask you some questions related to marketing.

1. How is the strategy in creating a system which can provide our business continuous sales?

2. when we do a trade negotiation, what factors or elements we can take the benefit of to maximize the percentage of succes?

thank you.

[Shopmatic · Accepted solution]

---

@ozzi101 wrote:

dear mr. Anurag Avula, I want to ask you some questions related to marketing.

1. How is the strategy in creating a system which can provide our business continuous sales?

2. when we do a trade negotiation, what factors or elements we can take the benefit of to maximize the percentage of succes?

thank you.

---

To get continuos sales, one should have as many online sales channels to reach as many customer as possible - right from your inividual webstore to selling on marketplaces to social channels. You should also have your channels of communication via email marketing etc. Using social channels to market your products is a cost effective method to raise awareness of your product and use search words etc to sell your products.

[ferdianregy]

Hello, all

whether it's better than adwords ppc?
what is the difference with adwords ppc?

[ferdianregy]

the online business, online business what it really benefit?

[Referral]

Thank you have having this great Ask an Expert Q&A session.

I love talking to beautiful entrepreneur like Rachel Chan and below are some of my questions for you.

• Being a founder & CEO at LIVE3LY, where & how did you get your idea or concept for this business?
• You loves meeting like-minded people and on a look out for business partnerships. What do you look for in business partner and usually where do you meet these potential partners?
• You mentioned “Team sizes matter”. What’s your ideal size and what your team consist of? And what do you look for in your team?
• You also mentioned “When handling money internationally, make sure you do it in a cost-effective way”. Can you share with us on this in-depth? What mistakes did you make during the startup and how do you make this more cost-effective later?

Thank you

[RachelChan · Accepted solution]

---

@Referral wrote:

Thank you have having this great Ask an Expert Q&A session.

I love talking to beautiful entrepreneur like Rachel Chan and below are some of my questions for you.

• Being a founder & CEO at LIVE3LY, where & how did you get your idea or concept for this business?
• You loves meeting like-minded people and on a look out for business partnerships. What do you look for in business partner and usually where do you meet these potential partners?
• You mentioned “Team sizes matter”. What’s your ideal size and what your team consist of? And what do you look for in your team?
• You also mentioned “When handling money internationally, make sure you do it in a cost-effective way”. Can you share with us on this in-depth? What mistakes did you make during the startup and how do you make this more cost-effective later?

Thank you

---

Hi Referral,

Thank you for your compliments. My answers may not be applicable for all situations, but I hope they will help provide some insights to your entrepreneur journey. All the best! 🙂

• Being a founder & CEO at LIV3LY, where & how did you get your idea or concept for this business?

There are existing platforms available out there and my "idea" is not new. Through the years of experience in a sport event company, challenges and task that I've took on, speaking to people on the ground, I've found areas that are lacking or could be done better. 

• You loves meeting like-minded people and on a look out for business partnerships. What do you look for in business partner and usually where do you meet these potential partners?

My search for partners is simple. Recognise your weakness and find a business partner who has the strength that you are weak in. To find a business partner, you can start from your circle of friends, your work contacts, networking sessions, etc... there is no limit to where you can find potential partners. I've heard of a true story where the business partner was "wooed" in the ladies restroom!

• You mentioned “Team sizes matter”. What’s your ideal size and what your team consist of? And what do you look for in your team?

As a tech company, it's important to have the following areas covered: - Business Development, System Design & Development, Client Servicing & Support, Finance and Marketing. As a start up with a lean budget, every team member's role is crucial. You cannot afford to have a weak link that has potential to slow down/jeopardise the business growth. Some traits that I look for, other than their domain knowledge, are the eagerness to learn new things, pro-active, team player aka get along well with the rest of the team, problem solver, etc. 

• You also mentioned “When handling money internationally, make sure you do it in a cost-effective way”. Can you share with us on this in-depth? What mistakes did you make during the startup and how do you make this more cost-effective later?

My business operation is unique whereby I collect my client event's registration fee on behalf. For example, LIV3LY's business is in Singapore and the event is held in Thailand. I have to collect registration fee in Thai Bath, pay out to the event organiser in Thai Bath and the rest of the fee charges will need to convert back to LIV3LY in Singapore Dollars. On LIV3LY's part, to convert Thai Bath into Singapore Dollars, there is a cost incurred in exchange rate. On the client's part, there is a TT transfer fee incurred. I've spoken to PayPal, our banks as well as my finance team, together we have 2 - 3 workable solutions for the client to choose from.

One of the many mistakes that I have made during the start up is I was too eager to hire without any confirm deals in yet. There were several months of sleepless nights watching my bank figures diminishing at a rapid rate. So, I took a risk by hiring a sale person to increase sales. I've cut cost by stopping some projects with my vendors and pass on these projects to my team, meaning they have to take on more roles than their usual scope. Drive the team to develop new features that bring in new source of revenues. With some luck, we've pulled through the difficult phrase.

Yours sincerely,

Rachel

[Referral]

---

@RachelChan wrote:

Hi Referral,

Thank you for your compliments. My answers may not be applicable for all situations, but I hope they will help provide some insights to your entrepreneur journey. All the best! 🙂

• Being a founder & CEO at LIV3LY, where & how did you get your idea or concept for this business?

There are existing platforms available out there and my "idea" is not new. Through the years of experience in a sport event company, challenges and task that I've took on, speaking to people on the ground, I've found areas that are lacking or could be done better. 

• You loves meeting like-minded people and on a look out for business partnerships. What do you look for in business partner and usually where do you meet these potential partners?

My search for partners is simple. Recognise your weakness and find a business partner who has the strength that you are weak in. To find a business partner, you can start from your circle of friends, your work contacts, networking sessions, etc... there is no limit to where you can find potential partners. I've heard of a true story where the business partner was "wooed" in the ladies restroom!

• You mentioned “Team sizes matter”. What’s your ideal size and what your team consist of? And what do you look for in your team?

As a tech company, it's important to have the following areas covered: - Business Development, System Design & Development, Client Servicing & Support, Finance and Marketing. As a start up with a lean budget, every team member's role is crucial. You cannot afford to have a weak link that has potential to slow down/jeopardise the business growth. Some traits that I look for, other than their domain knowledge, are the eagerness to learn new things, pro-active, team player aka get along well with the rest of the team, problem solver, etc. 

• You also mentioned “When handling money internationally, make sure you do it in a cost-effective way”. Can you share with us on this in-depth? What mistakes did you make during the startup and how do you make this more cost-effective later?

My business operation is unique whereby I collect my client event's registration fee on behalf. For example, LIV3LY's business is in Singapore and the event is held in Thailand. I have to collect registration fee in Thai Bath, pay out to the event organiser in Thai Bath and the rest of the fee charges will need to convert back to LIV3LY in Singapore Dollars. On LIV3LY's part, to convert Thai Bath into Singapore Dollars, there is a cost incurred in exchange rate. On the client's part, there is a TT transfer fee incurred. I've spoken to PayPal, our banks as well as my finance team, together we have 2 - 3 workable solutions for the client to choose from.

One of the many mistakes that I have made during the start up is I was too eager to hire without any confirm deals in yet. There were several months of sleepless nights watching my bank figures diminishing at a rapid rate. So, I took a risk by hiring a sale person to increase sales. I've cut cost by stopping some projects with my vendors and pass on these projects to my team, meaning they have to take on more roles than their usual scope. Drive the team to develop new features that bring in new source of revenues. With some luck, we've pulled through the difficult phrase.

Yours sincerely,

Rachel

---

Hello Rachel,

Thank you for your interesting and trueful answers, especially on your “several months of sleepless nights watching my bank figures diminishing at a rapid rate”. Yes, this indeed is very true for most start-up.

Hope you don’t mind on these follow up questions; now that you have go through all these ups & downs, what advise will you give to your son/ daughter about their career life (with the intention of not going over the same mistakes and heart ache you went through)? And what things do you want them to learn from you? (Value, skills set anything..)