“How do we reach customers thru new channels and increase sales velocity?”
The Challenge: Unlocking New Sales Channels Without Disruption
A global technology company’s VP of eCommerce & Strategy managed a billion-dollar business selling hardware and software products through company-owned distribution channels.
The company needed a way to expand reach into new channels while protecting the brand & integrity of the customer experience, solving for low margins and sales velocity on end-of-life inventory via liquidation, and minimizing disruption to existing sales and operations.
The Sparklos Approach: Incubation & Validation for Strategic Expansion
Using Sparklos’ Growth Validation incubation methodology and “Full Stack” execution capability, we designed and executed a low-risk, high-impact marketplace expansion strategy outside the customer’s run rate business and integrated it into the client’s operations once proven to work.
Sparklos developed a third-party marketplace strategy to help their organization reach new customers and improve recovery on obsolete products while ensuring customer experience consistent with the brand. We began with extensive due diligence and negotiations with major marketplace platforms like eBay, Rakuten, and Amazon, ensuring favorable terms along with operational controls to safeguard the organization’s brand.
To validate the business model, Sparklos designed, built, and managed a controlled pilot, leveraging in-house capabilities for merchandising, technology, and customer support. To minimize impact to the client’s run-rate operations, we sourced a trusted third-party fulfillment partner to support both the pilot and scaling. Our development team also built middleware to integrate existing client and marketplace infrastructure, allowing for rapid deployment of inventory to marketplaces and managing fulfillment, finance, and customer service data and workflows.
After proving the viability of the marketplace model, we partnered with the client to transition operations back to their internal capabilities, ensuring they could immediately execute fulfillment via the third-party vendor leveraging the technology stack and business processes Sparklos had built. The success of the model led the customer to move towards direct fulfillment shortly after integration.
The Outcome: Scaled Growth and Improved Financial Performance with Minimal Risk
- Incubated new sales channel with minimal impact on core business
- 90% of customers were net new, expanding org’s reach
- 150% improvement in margin recovery on obsolete inventory with an improved, branded client-controlled customer experience
- 535k units sold from launch through 2024
Looking to break into new sales channels?
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