Nikola Simeonov is an e-commerce entrepreneur having a wonderful, successful journey with his Shopify store. He can be a big inspiration for you too: “The path will lead you where you want to go.”
Nikola is the owner of eButik online store, he is mainly selling women clothing. His big success has started its way from Bulgaria and it’s something that still runs well. He had big dreams when he opened his Shopify store and he has already made a lot of them come true by being single-minded and optimistic. However, he doesn’t stop dreaming, he already has the next goals that he will certainly reach using Syncee. After years of manual uploading, he let his life become easier and more successful as for his e-commerce business!
Let’s see how you can become more successful by forgetting manual product management and how easy it is to get rid of this time-consuming, financially unfavorable process.
Introduce your online store! What is your background story?
I am in the e-commerce business for a long time. I guess my first online store was back in 2007 and I was selling cellular phones laptops etc. After I made it successful I sold it for a good price. After a couple of years, I wanted to start something that will never die or be overwhelmed by big companies and I was thinking what will be that? The task was to search for a product or service that will have huge demand and it will be continuous.
Well… I figured it out and this was women clothes. Yup, women are the biggest consumers in the world and they will be in the future. So I started with women clothing and it was hard to find something that I like and my customers like too. It was something like trying different suppliers’ different prices to find the right niche. Well, since 2013 I am doing well and I have a solid audience with regular spendings on clothes.
What were your main struggles in the beginning? How did you overcome them?
I really was angry and I was about to quit till I found the right e-commerce platform. I wanted it to be beautiful and clean, easy to work on and to have many options for manual editing and expanding to different channels. I started with a local platform which couldn’t manage the traffic I had with my store in the first 3 months. They started to charge me a lot of money for hosting services which drove me crazy.
Why you chose Shopify? Since when have you been using this platform?
I started to look for a new platform with unlimited traffic and away from my domestic options which were all the same. I stopped at Shopify and we matched almost right away. When I opened my Shopify admin I had no doubt that this is my dream store. So I started the migration 3 months later and since the autumn of 2013, I am using Shopify.
Where did you find Syncee? Since when are you using the app?
I found it in the App Store while I was looking for an app which can allow my expansion. I am successfully using Syncee since April 2017.
How was your e-commerce business before Shopify, after starting to work on Shopify, then before using Syncee and after that?
My business was really small in the beginning but I definitely wanted my store to be beautiful, easy to use, and easy to customize. Then I found Shopify, they saved me! After a couple of years, I wanted to expand with many products from different suppliers. I hired so many people to maintain the everyday basic work with products, prices etc. It was a nightmare… and in the end Syncee popped up. I can remember, I installed Syncee when they showed up on the App Store but it was hard for me to make the right mapping and it didn’t work well. Now Syncee works like a charm and it’s really easy to manage since there is such a professional customer service. I can’t remember having problems since the support team is managing my tasks. In two words… just install Syncee and tell Imre (a member of the customer service’s team) what you want… he will do the work. Of course, having the entire Syncee team behind the support staff is essential to reach the best result.
How did you manage your online store, and products before you started using Syncee?
Well, there were a couple of employees that doing all the uploads, translations and inventory update every day for years which cost me a lot of money. Since I found Syncee there is some work on translations after uploads because my language is different from the feed and I do this myself. So after I did the math I decided to pay Syncee instead of 3 employees and it’s worth it… believe me!
How many products do you have now that Syncee is managing?
Now Syncee manages 22k of products from 3 different suppliers for me. They helped me to achieve my expansion and to effortlessly manage such a big database. I hope everything will go well later on so I can expand a little bit more. I am selling men’s wear since the end of January thanks to Syncee and I am willing to start selling kids wear too.
What can you thank to Syncee?
Well, it’s a pain to find the right people and app which can properly upload and manage your products. Since I am using Syncee I reached my goal to have more products and meanwhile to manage them with ease. Believe me, I tried many apps in the store and the best app I ever used for uploading managing my store is Syncee. As far as I am familiar with Shopify I think Syncee have very serious developers who know what they are doing and know the mechanics of Shopify. I hope Syncee achieves to become one of the biggest Shopify partners.
What would you tell about inventory management and the importance of doing it well?
It’s very important to have the accurate quantities in your inventory if you use a feed. Imagine you are spending dollars to get people in your store and how hard it is to get them to buy something… Now imagine that this sale is lost because your inventory is not accurate with your supplier and you can’t fulfill the order. So I think that if you work hard and do everything right and beautiful to make sales you can’t afford to lose those hard-earned sales! It’s very important how your products are imported, how much information is uploaded, and how you can easily manage it so you won’t miss a sale.
How did you earn your first sales? How you generate the most traffic now?
I made my first sell on the 3rd day since the opening. I was using Adwords and it worked great back then. Now I am generating traffic mainly from my Facebook Business Page, Facebook Ads are also organic, and other social platforms too.
What was your first or biggest success with your online store?
It was in 2016. I was looking for a niche and a supplier which is not familiar to my market and I found it. 2 years ago in January, I started to work with them and from a 4 figures monthly revenue I hit 6 figures. It was a really good year!
What are the main lessons that you’ve learned in e-commerce?
Everybody should go through their own path and learn his personal lessons. Every case is different and the journey is very interesting.
What are your plans for the future?
I want to become one of the biggest retailers in my country ; )
What advice would you tell to new Shopify and Syncee users?
Open your store, install Syncee, choose your suppliers, and start the journey. Learn and understand marketing and the path will lead you where you want to go.
