I’ve been creating web stores since the early days of the web, 1999 is when I first got the bug. The experience has been invaluable, even if the businesses may have not been the most profitable. In the spirit of full disclosure and the entertainment of my wife, the sites have sold unlocked cell phones, women’s shoes and clothing, and handmade leather goods. My latest foray has been in bedding and home linens.
I decided to go with Shopify because it’s easy as sin. A form or two to fill out, a couple clicks, and hurray you’re up and running. Now came the hard part. I somehow have to get 1,100 SKUs into Shopify. Variations need to be intact, descriptions included and some decent photos preferably high resolution. No problem I thought, I’ll just sit down and knock it out. Maybe a day or so of work. So I began, and roughly 10 minutes later my first product was live on my Shopify store!
My excitement was quickly curbed when I opened up Excel and ran the numbers. Ok, 10 minutes per SKU times 1,100 SKUs equals 11,000 minutes. Wow, that sounds like a lot, how many hours is that? 11,000 divided by 60, wha!!!!!!! that would be 183 hours! At 40 hours per week it would take me over one month to put in my SKUs, and that’s if I don’t get any more SKUs in and I don’t have to worry about accounting, marketing, purchasing, researching new products, or basically any other small business activity. That’s just not going to happen, there has to be be an app or two out there that will fit the bill, let me look.
I tried maybe a half dozen very well designed apps out there. They worked well, and looked great. Problem is they didn’t do what I wanted. They all were very similar and involved a huge effort of uploading or entering in your existing inventory into their app and then pushing these products to their respective marketplaces. While discounting the world class logistics engine that is Amazon FBA.
From this personal pain, and what I imagined is the pain of many FBA sellers, ByteStand was born. The goal of ByteStand is simple, click once, wait a couple minutes, let the technology do the heavy lifting, and like magic your Shopify store is populated with pictures, descriptions and variations galore. But of course the details are where the difficulties lie. How do we handle variations, variant pictures, descriptions, duplicates, used vs. new, sellable vs unsellable, which API to consume and on and on ad nauseam.
But the good news is we are almost there. So close I can see it just up ahead, my eyes might be playing tricks on me, but I swear the end is just over the next hill, maybe one more turn and we’ll be done. And instead of one month’s worth of work for our users, it will take one click and just enough time to run to the kitchen to top off your cup of coffee.
Maximizing E-commerce Success: Leveraging Amazon MCF via Shopify with a Third-Party App
Introduction In the fast-paced world of e-commerce, one thing is certain: efficient and reliable shipping can make or break your online store. As a Shopify store merchant, you're likely familiar with the importance of a seamless shipping process. This is where Amazon...
Shopify Amazon Integration in 10 Easy Steps
There’s a HUGE learning curve when you’re first setting up an online store. You can spend 38 million hours Googling this stuff. Or you can ask a magical genie to help you get setup.
Boost Conversion with Virtual Bundles on Shopify with ByteStand & Amazon MCF
Our Virtual Bundle feature assists you in quickly mapping your physical FBA SKUs to your Amazon virtual bundle SKUs. Now, you may be asking, what does that mean?
Amazon Aggregators Could Make You Wealthy
If your vision for your ecommerce business involves getting bought up, you’re in luck. As we covered in a recent post, groups of ecommerce investors known as “Amazon aggregators” are acquiring profitable ecommerce operations and scaling them into digital superstores.
Changes are coming to Shopify’s plans and features
Starting January 1, 2023, stores on the Shopify Starter and Basic plans will no longer be able to request access to the Carrier Service API (Carrier Calculated Shipping).
Amazon Blank Box Program for Shopify
There’s a HUGE learning curve when you’re first setting up an online store. You can spend 38 million hours Googling this stuff. Or you can ask a magical genie to help you get setup.
Are you leveraging Amazon MCF to it’s fullest potential?
Not only can you fulfill your organic Shopify orders via MCF. Using the ByteStand MCF/FBA Shipping app you can also send your eBay, Etsy, TikTok, etc orders to Amazon MCF as well.