This week, we’re kicking off a new Q&A-style segment on the blog: Lunch with Littledata!

We sat down (virtually) with Chad Rubin, Co-founder and CEO of Skubana, a multi-channel inventory management and ERP software working largely in the Shopify ecosystem.

Let’s dive right in!

Q: How are your customers handling COVID-19? Thriving? In a drought? Somewhere in between?

What we’re seeing is essentials thrive. Brands that are providing non-discretionary necessities in the household are doing exceptionally well, and that’s where we’re building our pipeline. But also it’s how Skubana has historically been built, through customers selling essential finished goods across multiple channels with multiple warehouses.

Overall, what you’re seeing in ecommerce is a shift of spending behavior. With quarantine in effect, the only way to purchase right now is online, not in store. So while ecommerce isn’t necessarily immune to recessions, given the pandemic, we’re seeing customers on the Skubana platform behaving in a way that is inconsistent with what we’d expect in an economic downturn.

Q: How has Skubana adapted to the pandemic era?

Honestly, as a retail operations platform, we’re at the epicenter of this rush to be online and supply this surge in demand. Skubana enables both brick-and-mortar and online purchases, whether that’s on Shopify, Amazon, eBay, you name it.

As a business, we’re also extremely focused on our employees. Once the risk of COVID-19 was made clear in early March, we implemented a company-wide work from home policy. It was the first time we allowed that to happen. And I believe that it’s going to become the future of this company, to flourish “remotely.”

Note: At Littledata, here’s why we believe remote work is more productive

We’ve been able to adapt pretty quickly from a company perspective, but it’s not all rosy. We’ve already had some disappointing casualties from customers who have been on our platform for years. So while there’s a lot of momentum and encouragement, there are some cases where customers have closed-up overnight or have sought relief. And we work with those individual customers to help them see this through, given the circumstances.

We’ve been very action-oriented and proactive in our efforts to make sure that they come out of this alive and in business.

Q: You also run your own DTC store on Shopify. As a seller, how do you mitigate the costs of unpredictable shopper behavior, both before and after checkout?

In addition to co-founding Skubana, I also run a direct-to-consumer home essentials e-commerce business called ThinkCrucial. So it’s great that ThinkCrucial is an “essential” business. We supply home appliance parts and accessories.

Again, we’re right in the epicenter of panic buying, of people stocking up. And a symptom of that could be stock-outs. Luckily, we have  Skubana to forecast the demand, to mitigate if we’re running low on certain channels, to allow us to be flexible with inventory deployment, and so on.

So that’s been just an incredible case study for us. It has automated our entire business and allowed us to be more efficient and resilient. I initially built Skubana because of these issues I was experiencing with ThinkCrucial. I was unable to find a solution that could help me with all of these things at once.

Another cool thing that we’ve done is implement the  Bold Upsell app. Within the Skubana platform, it’s easy to identify high-velocity products that people are buying all the time, especially in this environment. And we’ve been upselling those people with additional products that they should be buying as well. And that strategy has worked very well for us. That’s a simple app that we’ve installed that we didn’t have pre-COVID that has increased AOV for us.

Tip: Did you know Littledata has an advanced Google Analytics connection for Shopify and Bold subscriptions?

Q: What are some “hidden” challenges of cross-border ecommerce? And some underrated solutions?

First, I just want to shout out one more app that I think we’ve been leveraging more heavily during this time which is called  Tone. It’s a Shopify app that leverages SMS to re-engage customers who abandon their cart.

So as people abandon their carts, we’ve enabled this app to catch that customer that left to get them back into the sales funnel, which also lowers acquisition costs. We’ve been able to recover lost dollars and lost baskets because of it.

Tip: Struggling to reduce cart abandonment? We have you covered

In terms of cross-border commerce, it’s been just business as usual for us. I think everyone’s well aware that there are fulfillment delays during this time as warehouse employees are social distancing, and air cargo availability has decreased. The most important thing you can do is make sure you have the infrastructure to enable the movement of parcels. And of course, we use Skubana to make that happen.

Tip: 4 tips for Shopify Plus merchants selling internationally

Q: What are some “tricks of the trade” larger stores use (especially those running on Shopify Plus) to handle busy shopping seasons?

This virus is preying on weak businesses. We’ve seen that COVID-19 is having the biggest impact on retailers that don’t have their operations buttoned up, and still working with inefficiencies.

One of those weaknesses is that people aren’t leveraging technology to replace low-value, repetitive tasks. Right now, people should be leveraging any downtime to reinforce and build the foundation of their business with resilient operational software. That means implementing software that is nimble, agile, and not painful to deploy. Software that connects to all of their channels and warehouses to properly forecast and demand plan. That’s table stakes right now.

On top of that, brands need to focus on technology that facilitates customer connection and retention. You need to reach out to those customers and communicate with them to convert them into buyers. And not just one-time buyers, but consistent repeat buyers, which of course, extends their lifetime value (LTV).

We’re looking at new apps all the time on Shopify. We already have our foundation built on Skubana, but we’re constantly trying to figure out how we “one-up” others and excel or accelerate our progress in this environment.

Q: How does ecommerce look different for larger Shopify stores vs. smaller/mid-sized stores right now?

So I think this downturn has been beneficial for many small businesses. I see good and bad with these unprecedented circumstances.

We know that Shopify stores have been seeing Black Friday traffic every day of this pandemic. Additionally, we saw Amazon restrict certain items to FBA, which ultimately reinforces the need for diversification and a multi-channel strategy. Those that are positioned and diversified across multiple channels that have the right infrastructure to be able to support this uptick have been able to benefit. And a lot of those SMBs have built their sites on Shopify, so I think that’s a huge positive for the small to medium-sized businesses. 

We saw sellers who focused exclusively on Amazon become significantly affected because they couldn’t replenish the products during the FBA block. Also, Amazon didn’t let you add new listings to their catalog for some time. So actually, we saw sellers move to Walmart and eBay because they were able to accept new products onto their platform. So a lot of new merchants and brands embraced other channels during this period and opened up.

Another thing to note is that Google started offering free product listings. So I think that there might be a shift coming out of Coronavirus to expand as an SMB across many other channels.

Q: How important is it to have accurate Shopify tracking & reporting?

It’s essential. If you’re using multiple point solutions, like a purchase order app or a forecasting app, and you’re just duct-taping them together, but they were never meant to talk to each other, your data is not going to be accurate.

If you’re using multiple point solutions, and you’re just duct-taping them together, but they were never meant to talk to each other, your data is not going to be accurate.

I’ve tried every other software out there. I developed Skubana out of the pain that I’ve experienced deploying those other point solutions and those fragmented pieces of software.

Having everything in one place is vital so that you’re able to ensure your products are in-stock and making you money. It means you are not spending your precious time doing manual labor to calculate how much inventory to reorder, when to buy, where to ship that new inventory to, which vendor needs the most lead time, etc. 

Note: Here’s how you can get 100% accurate Shopify tracking

Q: How do Skubana customers (merchants) use tracking to optimize performance?

When you have a holistic solution for every part of your business, you’re able to make more decisive decisions regarding growth, expansion, replenishment, and even cutting back.

When you have a holistic solution for every part of your business, you’re able to make more decisive decisions regarding growth, expansion, replenishment, and even cutting back.

You need to have accurate data not just on orders coming in but on the  inventory available across all warehouses, 3PLs, FBA, and fulfillment operations. Automating that is invaluable. And replacing human labor so you can have your team doing higher-value activities is the name of the game. To survive this, you need a resilient business that can scale as needed. As a retailer, you have to be more efficient with your staff and your business, and that’s what Skubana merchants are doing with our platform.

 

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