Today I have the pleasure of welcoming Thomas Bertrand, founder of Bento&Co, Ship&Co and great Shopify user since 2006! Let's take a look at what Thomas thinks about E-commerce and Shopify.
Hello Thomas, can you tell us about your activities?
I have been living in Japan, in Kyoto, since 2003. I had come here to finish my studies and did not expect to stay so long... Since 2008, I have been trading online, with Bento&co, a sales site on Shopify. There are now 4 sites: in French, in English, in Japanese and for sale to professionals. We also have a physical store in Kyoto.
As indicated by his name, Bento&co is a store of bento boxes and other Japanese kitchen accessories. We also have a small range of bento food, such as furikake Where Kameda's Kakinotane Aperitif !
Although Bento&co is still continuing its adventure, for the past 3 years, I have been more active for Ship&co.
Ship&co is an app (SAAS) for e-Merchants, allowing you to link online sales platforms and carriers to manage your parcel shipments.
So you're really into Shopify, what do you think of the solution, its advantages and disadvantages?
Ah bottom, yes, since their beta in 2006! I still have my account open so by the way.
At the time, I blogged a lot on "La Rivière aux canards" and I liked to present the new online services of the moment. I was told about Shopify and quickly got an invite to test .
I immediately loved being able to start an online store as easily as I could write a blog post. There were certainly few settings to make at the time, but the basics were already there: no need to be a dev. or a graphic designer to start.
My first shop was for the small company I was working for in Osaka at the time, then I started freelancing in Kyoto and that's how I started Bento&co in November 2008.
I think it took me barely 3 weeks (and 500 euros worth of stock) to open the first version of the site. I never wanted to change. Shopify has really changed my life (PayPal too, since it was then the only solution that allowed me to receive international payments easily).
Cons, there are not many. But I look forward to the launch of new APIs for checkout. We will finally be able to offer withdrawal points before payment :-)
You launched Ship&co which is developing well, can you explain the concept to us?
Ship&co is an app that connects online stores and carrier accounts to create shipping labels and update the status of an order with its tracking number.
Our app therefore allows you to connect in a few clicks, one or more Shopify stores (but also Presta, ebay, Amazon...) with a Colissimo or DHL, Fedex, UPS account.
The vast majority of our customers are on Shopify and in Japan because we are the only app of its kind to connect to all Japanese domestic carriers (Yamato, Sagawa and Japan Post).
But we are starting to have a lot of Shopify sellers, on 3 different continents, sellers who find our App the most convenient to connect to DHL or Fedex.
Being customers of DHL, UPS and Fedex ourselves, as we have been shipping our Bento&co parcels since 2008, we knew what was and was not necessary to manage the shipments. We have therefore kept what is necessary and with a UI that seems to suit more and more sellers who previously used other apps of the same type ;-)
For French sellers, we recently launched Colissimo and soon, the Delivengo service from La Poste / Asendia will also be available.
Here is a short video showing how the App works:
If you had to make 3 predictions for ecommerce in 2020, what would they be?
Not really a prediction, but a big wish, which I have had for years: that international online sales become easier. Being able to sell including VAT (and therefore send with carriers managing DDU, delivery duty paid) so that the customer does not have any unpleasant surprises on delivery with the payment of customs fees. It's complicated to set up because you need a solution that can calculate these fees and taxes during checkout. But if an app or Shopify allowed this to all its sellers, it would be exceptional.
Auteur
Benoit Gaillat