Only Global

Nafees Din is the Founder and Director of Only Global: “We needed control of our business, so we looked at some systems on the market. I also got a recommendation to try Volo from a colleague who worked at Genie and the Geek. He had a lot of experience in ecommerce and I trusted his opinion. The major benefit for us was having everything in one place, it has made such a difference to us. The search allows us to drill down into one supplier or one site easily which saves an extraordinary amount of time. We would easily spend 5 hours per day creating orders, which now takes 10 minutes and the orders are three times the size!

“I did all the tutorials, followed all the training, and off we went. We use some virtual suppliers and have remote control of these thanks to the stock feeds in Volo. I’ve already said it, but the biggest thing for us is control. Every business needs it, and with Volo you’ve got that control, over your listings, your stock, your reporting, the whole operation.”

“A few things really make the difference for us. The first is really good reporting. As a manager, at the click of a few buttons I can see the key sellers. Knowing what’s selling well really helps me when I’m importing my goods. I know what to import and I can get my quantities spot on. Volo tells me at a glance where I was at in January 2012 for example, and January 2013, so I can see the improvement in the business. It tells me what are my best selling months so I can map my inventory to the seasons. Sure, I could have done this in Paypal, but it would have taken me ages

“Secondly, the speed and time-saving with listings. We can do bulk listing via spreadsheets and this is a massive time-saver for us. The teams in Pakistan and the Philippines spend the majority of their time listing and so this is critically important in terms of managing costs and efficiency. In terms of growth, we can do in 2 months with Volo what would have taken us 12 months on our own. We’ve been with them for 2 years. We were doing £2m a year, now it’s £6m.”

“Christmas was never a big a deal for us, in fact it was pretty quiet. Our last Christmas broke all records and we’re expecting 2014 to do the same.

“Everyone has access to Volo at Only Global. The system records everything and this really helps with accountability. Any error or,for example, someone selling below cost price, is held in the listing history. I can pin down who did what, where and when and this visibility into the detail helps me cut down on bad practices and protect my margins. Lastly, the support team is very friendly, which is good. You get responses back in minutes and they’re very helpful.

“With the experience we’ve gained we’ve been able to bring on other merchants and help them, and this grows our business too.”