Today’s blog is a quick fire Q&A with the Founders, Ram and Sukhi. They talk about what MarketOrders does, how they came up with the idea of digitising the gold trade industry and the defining moment that changed it all.
Tell us what your business does in fewer than 25 words:
MarketOrders in an online marketplace helping to connect independent jewellery brands directly to manufacturer’s around the world to source the best products at the best price.
How did you come up with the idea?
The founders have been in the gold jewellery market for over 15 years and saw how inefficient and archaic the processes and systems are in the gold industry where it is still run in a very traditional manner and only 4% of transactions occur on-line.
We found in our previous business that we were still taking orders manually and found there was no online or curated destination for jewellery retailers to be able to source the products they needed. So we decided to help the retailers by accepting multiple small orders from many retailers and aggregating their orders. This aggregated order was then sent to the manufacturer who could accept larger orders and give us bulk discount savings. These savings are then passed back to the jewellery retailers.
Without MarketOrders, small retailers cannot access the products and prices the large manufacturer reserves for larger orders and clients. And the manufacturers also benefit by getting more orders from more customers. MarketOrders allows a more efficient way to manage the supply/demand issues that many small retailers and SMEs face.
photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/dropshipping-oberlo-shopify-3264486/
What makes your business different from the competition?
MarketOrders is the only online curated destination for the gold jewellery industry where every step of the process is online. Our customers, the retailers, can order products online, pay online and the products are delivered to their door.
All our competitors are still working in a hybrid version where only some of the processes are on-line and the rest is very manual and hence time-consuming which can lead to a lot of delays.
By bringing the entire supply chain online MarketOrders is able to bring greater visibility to the supply and demand of gold jewellery products. We can also collate data and use those insights to help our customers. For example, retailers can track which products sell the most at certain times throughout the year and we can even use this data to do predictive orders.
Who are your clients/customers? How many do you have?
MarketOrders is a 2-sided marketplace so we work with both the jewellery retailers (SMEs) and the manufacturers.
Currently we serve retailers based in the UK and work with manufacturers abroad (Hong Kong, Singapore & Dubai).
Our focus is on serving the gold, diamond and precious metals jewellers in the B2B space.
photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/jewelry-necklace-diamond-ring-3213722/
Key moments
What’s been the most challenging thing about starting your business so far?
The gold industry is extremely traditional and operates largely off-line. The only way to break into this market is by trust. It took us years to build solid relationships with manufactures and retailers. This took a lot of time and effort to develop but was worth it. Because this is the only way to really understand the problems your customers are facing.
Gold is an emotional product; people use it to look beautiful or use it as an investment for their security, so there is a huge amount of trust involved in every transaction. You need to prove that you are providing gold of a premium quality, be very clear and open as to where it is sourced from and to be able to deliver the products on time. So building that deep trust with each one of our customers had to be done in person and was challenging as it took many years to do.
What was your breakthrough moment?
When we realised we could aggregate multiple small orders from multiple retailers and aggregate them to a larger singular order so the manufacturer could accept the orders and give us bulk discount savings. This solved 2 problems; allowing smaller retailers to access these large manufacturers and get more designs and products at a lower price and also allow manufacturers to increase their capacity utilisation as their machinery was often left idle as they needed minimum orders to produce the products. For the first time, the gold industry was now on-line and had an on-line presence.
What is your goal for your business?
To create the largest and most trusted marketplace for the supply and provision of gold and associated products and take it to an IPO.
Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao
photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/agreement-beard-beverage-2548140/
MarketOrders is focused on helping off-line retailers to source the best gold products they need directly from the suppliers. And in order to do that we help retailers adopt the 3 C’s; A Consumer Centric Culture.
Our platform allows our customers to buy the products they need by creating a B4B model. This is known as Business-For-Business. This model works best when both players in the marketplace benefit from each transaction.
And this is exactly what happens with MarketOrders. Our retailer’s benefit from being able to access thousands of products online (when usually they only have access to 20-30 designs and products that the walk in sales man has on him at the time).
And the supplier’s benefit by now being able to service and supply smaller retailers who previously they could not serve due to the minimum order quantities they needed.
MarketOrders bypasses this problem by encouraging smaller orders from retailers and our unique software aggregates these orders into larger orders and routes them to the right supplier who can then accept the large order and provide us with a bulk discount cost. In the B4B model, it’s a win-win situation for all market players.
How do you achieve a Consumer Centric Culture?
A B4B model helps buyers to align with the consumer centric culture.
In order to achieve a consumer centric culture, the B4B model works backward towards a consumer centric culture. This amplifies the needs and wants of the customer coming into the store.
The availability of faster internet penetration and mobile devices allows the B4B concept to become more important because consumers now also have access to more products and have greater visibility of price, Consumers are walking into your shops knowing what they want. The question to retailers is, are you ready to serve your customers with what they are asking for?
We are working hard on creating the MarketOrders platform which can bring greater connections between retailers and manufacturers or suppliers in real time for the first time in a saleable and affordable manner.
A Consumer Centric Culture [3C’s] is one in which retail owners and employees are collectively working to fulfil customer’s needs as their ultimate goal. Everyone is aware of the direct and indirect impact his or her work has on the overall customers experience at every point of interaction within the customer journey.
If you are a retailer, how are you ensuring you create a consumer centric culture in your business? Please post in the comments below with your thoughts.
Why B4B model are so important in today’s digital consumer world?
photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/hand-business-human-africa-african-3230679/
Because mobile technology and the Internet have empowered consumers in a way that they are now more informed about market offers than the retailers trying to sell to them. Changing their minds or switching providers is now as easy as clicking a mouse. The combination of commoditization and the empowered customer is taking the fight to acquire and retain customers down to Consumer Centric Culture in today’s experience economy. Therefore business owners must be able to buy what the need in order to customise their customer’s requirement.
Today’s era is no longer B2C but C2B. Therefore B2B concept of “Make, Ship, Sell” no longer applicable and replace by B4B concept where allows retailers to buy “On Demand”.
B4B model encourages manufacturers to stop thinking about how they can sell more products and start thinking about understanding and actively working with retailers to arrive at a specific end result.
Applying B4B concept, market orders built the platform to bring “visibility of supply and Demand” for both retailers and manufacturers by “Digitization” the entire gold jewellery industry by Centralisation. Central network platform will successfully mapping out customer needs and desire, which will help retailer to practice customer centric culture in return.
Marketorders will help retailers to discover what their customer want, create great density with design and selection, transparent system and increase ability to tap to global sellers directly and faster, which will allow speed to market.
Now, using B4B concept, business owners will surround with customer-inspired culture. In today’s digital customer era, creating customer centric culture is top priority for all businesses especially independent small retailers to thrive in today’s customer first world.
Centralization allows data collection of every trade on the platform, that able to provide the insight and help grow the business of the participant on the platform with greater engagement to their customer closer. The building of technology embedded on MarketOrders platform are around customer experience and customer focus at the heart of the snowball effect.
The B4B concept with centralization network will help and built the ability of small business to be in control and success at scale.
By centralization of entire gold jewelry industry, it gives lens of visibility to participant of the platform to drive desired outcomes and creates opportunity to research and experiment using the collected data from marketorders platform. This process will give valued insight and able to re-create for each and every users to succeed at scale.
B4B concept model and technology built around customer experience and customer focus on Marketorders platform, help small business understand the customer needs and use the data available to drive the decision for their business success. The data can help participant traders to quantify the equation of the business and help them to operate efficiently and better.
Every facet of marketorders platform, architected to adopt at capturing and analyzing interaction and transaction of every trade data then turn those insight into actions that add-value to the participant of the platform collectively which will drive adoption for more business growth and ultimately lead in helping achieve targeted business outcome.
Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao
MarketOrders is a marketplace-connecting retailers to manufacturers. We call this a Business-For-Business concept (B4B).
What makes this approach different from traditional Business-To-Business (B2B) is that retailers are at the heart of key decisions on the MarketOrders platform.
Volume buyers are no longer the only ones with purchasing power. We champion the smaller retailers by helping them to get access to the manufacturers and products they need at the best possible price.
Our platform has been created on a secure base layer featuring On-Demand, Order-Aggregation processes.
Multiple orders from various different retailers are pulled together via our Smart Router mechanism. This becomes the primary source of business value as physical processes are turned into real-time data flow amongst a network of retailers and manufacturers. This allows the business owners to achieve economies of scale.
Why should retailers use the MarketOrders Platform?
Here are a few reasons as to why we believe retailers would benefit from using our platform that has been designed with the retailers specifically in mind.
photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/earth-globe-future-forward-golden-422758/
How does the MarketOrders platform work?
MarketOrders aims to be a single, unified and centralised platform creating the ultimate marketplace for the gold jewellery trade industry.
The aim of the marketplace is to consolidate the entire supply chain vertically from back-end production to front-end consumption across a network of retailers and manufacturers around the globe.
This allows the ‘middleman’ to be cut away from the process bringing greater efficiencies to the supply chain.
MarketOrders not only empowers the independent retailers (SME’s) but also makes it possible for them to be in.
MarketOrders is ushering in a digital revolution for traditional brick and mortar jewellery shops. This will allow them to face other digital challenges such as online jewellery shops and be better able to compete with the rise of the experience economy.
This article was written by Ram Krishnna Rao, CEO MarkerOrders
We are thrilled to announce the co-founder and COO of MarketOrders, Sukhi Jutla, has been nominated for The Asian Women of Achievement Awards.
The Asian Women of Achievement Awards, in association with NatWest, is pleased to announce the full shortlist for 2018. From women working to fight human trafficking to a powerlifting champion and an expert in the reproductive health of astronauts, the talent of this year’s line-up is astounding. The full shortlist celebrates candidates from all over the UK and with heritage from North Korea, Lebanon, China and India. The nominees are a shining example of the trailblazing work of Asian women in Britain today.
This year’s Asian Women of Achievement Awards will take place on Wednesday May 9, 2018, at the London Hilton on Park Lane.
The Asian Women of Achievement Awards showcases phenomenal Asian women across the UK and celebrates the valuable impact they make to British life. The awards play a key role in redefining the contribution of Asian women; and informing a new, positive, pro-diversity debate. Well done Sukh! We at MarketOrders are thrilled you have been shortlisted for this amazing award!
To see the official press release please click here. (link to the attached press release)
MarketOrders is a revolutionary B4B (Business-for-Business) platform providing independent jewellery retailers with a cheaper and better way to buy gold jewellery products & services through a disruptive eCommerce marketplace where orders are aggregated and sent to the manufacturer to secure bulk discount savings.
MarketOrders is branded as a retailer champion, delivering a better and fairer
way to buy products and services.
> Provides control – I order what I need, I feel that I am the boss.
> Saves money – cheaper than buying from wholesaler.
> Saves time – fast, intuitive and mobile first.
> Convenient – use it anyplace, anytime.
> Trusted – vetted marketplace.
> Transparent – clear how MarketOrders makes money.
Let us know if there is anything we could help you with to make you and your customers more happy.
Watch the video below where you will learn about:
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Watch the video below where you will learn:
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But we think this needs to change in the gold jewellery industry.
This is why MarketOrders is pioneering the way forward with a new concept called Business 4 Business.
The B4B model is a two-way relationship between manufacturers and retailers, where supply and demand have been sourced in a real time.
The old model (B2B) forces retailers to take whatever the manufacturer has already produced.
There is no personalisation or customisation.
In the video below, Ram our Founder, explains:
Watch the video below to learn more now.