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Show HN: OrderCircle – Wholesale ordering software for small businesses

ordercircle.com

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

#3

Post by jonah »

Very nice, I have clients who might be interested in this.

The first - and biggest - issue that came to mind is integration with warehousing, inventory management, ERP, etc. You have an API which is awesome, but you may want to look into building connectors to some more popular systems - it'll make setting it up much easier/cheaper and help sell it.

Another related question is the realtime inventory tracking - how will you handle this in companies who sell both retail and wholesale? Like above, integrations with POS and/or ecommerce systems will be helpful/necessary.

For both cases, one system has to be canonical - it may be OrderCircle, but it may not.

(Feel free to contact me if you want to chat - I've worked with your potential customers for many years.)

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

#4

Post by captk »

jonah wrote: post #3

Very nice, I have clients who might be interested in this. The first - and biggest - issue that came to mind is integration with warehousing, inventory management, ERP, etc. You have an API which is awesome, but you may want to look into building connectors to some more popular systems - it'll make setting it up much easier/cheaper and help sell it. Another related question is the realtime inventory tracking - how wi…

Thanks for checking it out Jonah - you're absolutely right that integrations are key. I've been working in ecommerce for a while and the one thing I figured out is that absolutely everyone has a different setup - which is why we went API first.

But you're totally right - we've got integrations with Bigcommerce and Shopify on the roadmap so users can pull in their products and make getting started easier.

For inventory, API is the best bet for now. When we launch our cart integrations, we'll probably treat the carts as "the truth" and decrement their inventory levels for wholesale transactions. Our early users are telling us they use their carts primarily to manage inventory.

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

#7

Post by captk »

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 to Shopify and Bigcommerce, which should help us get listed in their app stores and drive traffic.

Open to any other suggestions!

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

#9

Post by pgt »

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!

Congratulations on launching! This looks swell. Love the explainer video. I find the background cover photo distracting and doesn't seem to communicate benefits. Consider a solid color or a different photo.

Show benefits before features. Less text. Bigger font. More contrast.

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