S.M. Mamunur Rasid, the Cellsii.com marketplace owner<\/em> <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n\u2014 How did you start and from what? What\u2019s the background of your marketplace?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nI sold the first product at the beginning of 2016 from a Facebook page<\/em>.\n I was still doing a job in a private organization. At the same time, \nalso engaged with different freelance works related to digital \nmarketing, content, website, etc. That is how life could have been \npassed quite well. But I always wanted to do something on my own. In \n2005, during my student life, got my first part-time job in a daily \nnewspaper to update their news content and freelance report writing \nabout ICT. Gathered primary experiences on content, digital marketing, \nweb tools from there, which had helped me a lot further to understand \ndifferent aspects of business, especially eCommerce business.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI was not associated with any offline shop or business. There was no \nchance at all. I feel comfortable doing works or anything online. At the\n beginning of 2016, for the first time imported some products from \nabroad and advertised on Facebook, and managed to sell a hand bracelet<\/em>. That was an amazing experience.<\/strong>\n I still can remember that moment of the first sale. Then launched an \neCommerce website in 2017. The site was slowly getting richer. I quit my\n job in December 2017 and started a full-time business in the new year \nof 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u2014 How did you actually make a decision to start such a big \nonline project? I mean, it\u2019s not an easy job neither it\u2019s an easy \ndecision to launch an online marketplace.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn 2012, I started a digital marketing service on a freelance basis \nand served more than 500 small and large organizations and individual \nentrepreneurs. While doing this job, I learned about many established \ncompanies and entrepreneurs who have little idea about digital \nmarketing, business web tools, and technics though it is very important.\n But I had no money to launch a business of my own. Started from zero!<\/strong> Only had a dream of doing something.<\/strong> Then determined some goals and objectives:<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe project can go slowly<\/li> Each and every work will be done carefully<\/li> Dealing with a customer will be 100% transparent and honest<\/li> From one or two products, it will be thousands, will exceed millions.<\/li> From one or two customers it will be innumerable.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s how it started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u2014 What were the main reasons to launch a marketplace? What problems did you aim to solve with a marketplace?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nI had a tendency to find out solutions to any problem through \ntechnology. Dhaka is one of the busiest cities in the world. I find no \nreason in going to a shopping center after crossing a terrible traffic \njam. Moreover, people are very busy these days. So online shopping is a \nsimpler solution. Though the e-commerce journey started long ago in \nBangladesh, very few e-commerce, f-commerce work with the commitment. \nDelivery of quality products to the customer at the fastest time with a \ncompetitive market price is a big challenge. Cellsii.com sets a goal to \nfocus on these particular aspects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u2014 How did you plan the launch? I mean, did you invent a \nstrict business plan, marketing strategies, define your final goals? How\n did you do all this and how much time did it take?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nNothing happened under a strict business plan. I follow \u201cGo slowly and steadily\u201d<\/em>.\n Our product selection process focuses on quality issues rather than \nonly sales volume and always tries to deal honestly and fairly with all \nour valued customers. We work for building a relationship with the \ncustomer, not just a customer-seller deal. These are the business motto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur product selection process focuses on quality issues rather than only sales volume and always tries to deal honestly and fairly with all our valued customers.\u201d<\/em> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u2014 What difficulties and challenges did you face in the \ninitial stage before actually launching the marketplace to the full? \nFinding sellers? Meeting law regulations maybe?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt took more than a year when started knowing the ins and outs of the\n product, product sourcing, finding the right vendor, where to go, which\n product will be available at the lowest price, customer demand, \ncustomer behavior, etc. From the beginning to the present, a certain \ntime of the day is spent for market analysis. It is a very big field of \nwork and it takes a lot of time, effort, and talent to understand each \nand every segment of it. Once some things were settled, it was a big \nchallenge to coordinate them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether focus only on a specific category or work with verities, \nthere was confusion. Initially it only worked with smart gadgets but \nlater it started to focus on few more categories. However, only quality \nproducts are given priority in all categories till now. Above all, \ngetting the product to the customer in the fastest time is very \nchallenging here. Setting up your own delivery system is a very complex \ntask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u2014 Did the launch go smoothly? What new challenges did you \nface after the launch? Was it marketing and popularization of the \nmarketplace or something else?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nOf course, the beginning was not easy at all. The field of work there\n was very large. Everything from set-up the server to marketing, \ncustomer care, ensuring the delivery, etc., All these tasks needed \ncomprehensive coordination. We focus more on organic growth rather than \npaid marketing and follow the necessary practices to popularize the \nmarketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 How soon did you begin to earn with the marketplace after \nthe launch (if you\u2019re already getting profit)? Do you think you could \nstart getting profit earlier? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt is very difficult to start making a profit overnight by launching \nan e-commerce business. Sometimes that is impossible. Excluding the \noffice rent, staff salary, marketing cost, and related expenses, \nsometimes it might be very difficult to survive for an e-commerce \nstartup. A lot of things can be easier if you have previous experience \nin the market and products. If you can handle the marketplace website \nwithout hassle, capable to do marketing efficiently, have a well \nbusiness plan, and minimize overhead cost, it is possible to make a \nprofit in less time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 What big mistakes did you make running your marketplace? How would you avoid these mistakes now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe overhead cost of an online marketplace can be almost double that \nof any offline shop if it is not minimized. But the profit margin from a\n product will remain the same in both online and offline businesses. It \nis difficult to survive if someone makes a mistake in this equation. In \nthe beginning, renting an office in the most expensive area of the city \nwas a big mistake for us. It was assumed that the ROI would start coming\n very soon and the cost-benefit would be adjusted. But the realities \nwere different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u2014 What would you advise your less experienced colleagues-marketplace owners so that their marketplaces prosper?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nNeed to know the target market and the marketing very well. Build a \nhassle-free website so that you can concentrate more on your core \nbusiness, keep the site up to date with the latest technologies, \nfeatures and with the fastest server which will help you grow faster. \nGiving utmost importance to deliver the product to the customer in the \nfastest time. And gaining the trust of the customer by adopting all \nsorts of approaches. These are the key to a successful e-commerce \nstart-up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The interview taken by Yan Kulakov from CS-Cart. CS-Cart is world’s renowned multi-vendor e-commerce service provider. We’re sharing the interview as it is on their website. Hello! Yan from CS-Cart here. Recently, we have found out about a large online marketplace in Bangladesh called Cellsii.com. This marketplace is based on our multi-vendor platform CS-Cart Multi-Vendor. […] More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"reaction":[],"adace-sponsor":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6066,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/6066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"reaction","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reaction?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"adace-sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoppingsheba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/adace-sponsor?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}