
Show HN: OrderCircle – Wholesale ordering software for small businesses - captk
http://ordercircle.com
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soundlab
I run a bootstrapped manufacturing business that sells through a large network
of resellers- I'd say I'm squarely in your target market :-)

I have looked a lot at this space and there is a surprising lack of software
to handle this that doesn't start to bleed into complex ERP or that isn't a
poorly integrated "wholesale" feature for a traditional e-commerce app.

We use a SaaS called NowCommerce to handle this. It is designed with a bridge
to our Quickbooks company file and it works really well though with limited
functionality.

One key takeaway I've had looking at how orders are placed/processed/fulfilled
in my business is that wholesale purchasing practices are VERY ingrained.
Typically there is one person responsible for accounts payables and material
purchasing in a small business. That person will most often place orders via
Purchase Order (if the business is setup on credit terms). In my experience
that AP person will simply enter their PO directly into Quickbooks and email
it directly to the supplier- whose email contact is already setup in QB. For
them to use your portal they would need to separately login to your
application and duplicate their PO there by entering the info again.

The Purchase Order is critical for handling the payment of your invoice and
for receiving items into inventory when they come in- so not having a PO in
Quickbooks is not an option.

A small but growing segment of my customers use our wholesale order portal but
you may find that when your customers have the capability right in front of
them in QB it might be a trickier adoption curve than you think.

BTW if I had a magic wand I would create an email parsing application that can
READ that emailed PDF purchase order and auto-populate an order form or
Quickbooks invoice on the portal.

Best of luck from a fellow bootstrapper- please get in touch if I can be of
any help!

~~~
captk
Thanks for chiming in - you're definitely our target market exactly. Good
points on POs coming from QB. We thought of QB in that we already built an
integration for the seller to push invoices into QB automatically, but I
hadn't thought about it from the buyer's perspective with POs. We currently
allow you to enter a PO number on each order in OrderCircle so it can be
traced back, but I see the need for deeper integration if possible.

Very familiar with NowCommerce - they're really the only one out there doing
it even close to correctly (though they're very limited and locked into QB).
Also fairly expensive, yes?

Great thought on a QB PO importer/reader. It's a bit tough since POs are free-
form and you'd need to somehow automatically map it to the seller's SKUs. But
we'll definitely put that on the list to think through further.

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chatmasta
Awesome. I love seeing real businesses on HN. As in, businesses that can make
money from Day 1. (Anything else is a potentially lucrative hobby.)

There are hundreds of solo entrepreneurs who own ecommerce properties. Some
dropship, some carry inventory.... but all order from wholesale at some point.
This is definitely a good market to get into.

In your site you have "Bill sells to Joe" as an example. My advice is that you
market to both Bill _and_ Joe, regardless of who pays you. It sounds like both
Bill and Joe benefit, so you really only need one of them to convince the
other.

To target the buy-side of wholesale ordering, I would recommend posting to
marketing forums (Wickedfire comes to mind, maybe also forums around
4hourworkweek, millionaire fast lane type "lifestyle" businesses). You'll find
very specific clientele there who will definitely use your software.

~~~
captk
Thanks - that's always been my guiding tenant as an entrepreneur - start a
business that makes money right away.

Our primary marketing is currently focused on the business owner, since
they're the one that pays us for the subscription. However, we are launching a
feature that lets buyers refer other businesses in exchange for Amazon gift
cards ("Like buying this way? Tell your other suppliers!")

Good thought on going after the 4HWW community - this is perfect for a sub-10
employee business that doesn't have a lot of manpower to waste on pushing
paper.

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jonah
Very nice, I have clients who might be interested in this.

The first - and biggest - issue that came to mind is integration with
warehousing, inventory management, ERP, etc. You have an API which is awesome,
but you may want to look into building connectors to some more popular systems
- it'll make setting it up much easier/cheaper and help sell it.

Another related question is the realtime inventory tracking - how will you
handle this in companies who sell both retail and wholesale? Like above,
integrations with POS and/or ecommerce systems will be helpful/necessary.

For both cases, one system has to be canonical - it may be OrderCircle, but it
may not.

(Feel free to contact me if you want to chat - I've worked with your potential
customers for many years.)

~~~
captk
Thanks for checking it out Jonah - you're absolutely right that integrations
are key. I've been working in ecommerce for a while and the one thing I
figured out is that absolutely everyone has a different setup - which is why
we went API first.

But you're totally right - we've got integrations with Bigcommerce and Shopify
on the roadmap so users can pull in their products and make getting started
easier.

For inventory, API is the best bet for now. When we launch our cart
integrations, we'll probably treat the carts as "the truth" and decrement
their inventory levels for wholesale transactions. Our early users are telling
us they use their carts primarily to manage inventory.

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captk
Hey all - I'm the founder and have been working on this for months, solo (all
bootstrapped). Would love to chat with anyone from the community and hear what
you think!

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jrvarela56
Been working on a similar concept for the past 18 months! Shoot me an email if
you want to chat (see profile)

~~~
captk
Your email isn't in your profile as far as I can see :)

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fiatjaf
Screenshots of the interface!

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captk
Working on getting these onto the website, but wanted to drop a few for the HN
community here:

[http://cl.ly/XpGt/Screen%20Shot%202014-10-01%20at%203.41.09%...](http://cl.ly/XpGt/Screen%20Shot%202014-10-01%20at%203.41.09%20PM.png)

[http://cl.ly/XozQ/Screen%20Shot%202014-10-01%20at%203.41.30%...](http://cl.ly/XozQ/Screen%20Shot%202014-10-01%20at%203.41.30%20PM.png)

[http://cl.ly/Xpl2/Screen%20Shot%202014-10-01%20at%203.42.00%...](http://cl.ly/Xpl2/Screen%20Shot%202014-10-01%20at%203.42.00%20PM.png)

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pgt
This is so genius. Beautiful execution of a domain painpoint that underpins a
large market.

Who made your explainer video? They did a great job.

~~~
captk
Worked with an Elancer actually and got it done for $1k exactly. Quite the
steal :)

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NicoJuicy
Could you send me his name?

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DenisM
The messaging looks pretty good!

What's your sales and marketing plan? Direct sales?

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captk
Direct sales is really tough, but here's the plan:

1.) Seed to about 10-15 businesses I know personally - these guys have been
using it for about a month in private beta and giving feedback.

2.) I'm a frequent guest on several ecommerce podcasts and blogs - going to
use the opportunity to speak about the difficulties of wholesale for small
brands, with a small link to OrderCircle at the end.

3.) Building integrations to Shopify and Bigcommerce, which should help us get
listed in their app stores and drive traffic.

Open to any other suggestions!

~~~
jlarkin353
Happy to have you guest post on our blog Bill - blog.propelad.com

OrderCircle looks awesome, congrats!

Cheers, John

