Show HN: OrderCircle – Wholesale ordering software for small businesses • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: OrderCircle – Wholesale ordering software for small businesses

#21

Post by captk » Thu, Oct 02, 2014, 3:48 PM UTC

nlh wrote: post #13

captk wrote: post #2

Hey all - I'm the founder and have been working on this for months, solo (all bootstrapped). Would love to chat with anyone from the community and hear what you think!

Congrats as well -- looks fantastic. A non-technical question: How did the idea for this come about? Are/were you in the wholesale business? Did you work for folks who were? Just curious how ideas become seeds become launches... Good luck and have a blast with it.

The idea came about since I also own several manufacturing businesses. We couldn't find ANYTHING that addressed this market - all the solutions were either old school (desktop software), or very focused on the fashion market (nuOrder, Joor).

So being that I have a startup/tech background, we started to build our own solution. I made the decision early on to put in the extra effort to built it multi-tenant as a SaaS app so others could use it too.

So yes, it's built directly to scratch our own itch - and it's an itch I know others have as well from chatting with other business owners over the last few years. There was nothing out there for it, so we built it :)

Re: Show HN: OrderCircle – Wholesale ordering software for small businesses

#22

Post by chatmasta » Thu, Oct 02, 2014, 5:14 PM UTC

Awesome. I love seeing real businesses on HN. As in, businesses that can make money from Day 1. (Anything else is a potentially lucrative hobby.)

There are hundreds of solo entrepreneurs who own ecommerce properties. Some dropship, some carry inventory.... but all order from wholesale at some point. This is definitely a good market to get into.

In your site you have "Bill sells to Joe" as an example. My advice is that you market to both Bill and Joe, regardless of who pays you. It sounds like both Bill and Joe benefit, so you really only need one of them to convince the other.

To target the buy-side of wholesale ordering, I would recommend posting to marketing forums (Wickedfire comes to mind, maybe also forums around 4hourworkweek, millionaire fast lane type "lifestyle" businesses). You'll find very specific clientele there who will definitely use your software.

Re: Show HN: OrderCircle – Wholesale ordering software for small businesses

#23

Post by captk » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 1:53 AM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #22

Awesome. I love seeing real businesses on HN. As in, businesses that can make money from Day 1. (Anything else is a potentially lucrative hobby.) There are hundreds of solo entrepreneurs who own ecommerce properties. Some dropship, some carry inventory.... but all order from wholesale at some point. This is definitely a good market to get into. In your site you have "Bill sells to Joe" as an example. My advice is tha…

Thanks - that's always been my guiding tenant as an entrepreneur - start a business that makes money right away.

Our primary marketing is currently focused on the business owner, since they're the one that pays us for the subscription. However, we are launching a feature that lets buyers refer other businesses in exchange for Amazon gift cards ("Like buying this way? Tell your other suppliers!")

Good thought on going after the 4HWW community - this is perfect for a sub-10 employee business that doesn't have a lot of manpower to waste on pushing paper.

Re: Show HN: OrderCircle – Wholesale ordering software for small businesses

#24

Post by jlarkin353 » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 1:34 PM UTC

captk wrote: post #7

DenisM wrote: post #6

The messaging looks pretty good! What's your sales and marketing plan? Direct sales?

Direct sales is really tough, but here's the plan: 1.) Seed to about 10-15 businesses I know personally - these guys have been using it for about a month in private beta and giving feedback. 2.) I'm a frequent guest on several ecommerce podcasts and blogs - going to use the opportunity to speak about the difficulties of wholesale for small brands, with a small link to OrderCircle at the end. 3.) Building integrations…

Happy to have you guest post on our blog Bill - blog.propelad.com

OrderCircle looks awesome, congrats!

Cheers, John

Re: Show HN: OrderCircle – Wholesale ordering software for small businesses

#25

Post by xinwen » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 9:40 PM UTC

captk wrote: post #2

Hey all - I'm the founder and have been working on this for months, solo (all bootstrapped). Would love to chat with anyone from the community and hear what you think!

Really interesting idea. By day I'm an engineer at a YC company - but I've got a few eCommerce projects under my belt and wholesale has always interested me as well. If you have a second drop me an email (in my profile) I'd be interested to meet you.