Insights: Working With an eCommerce Brand Aggregator
An e-commerce brand aggregator is a company that acquires and manages multiple e-commerce brands, typically those that are successful but small to medium-sized. These aggregators consolidate these brands under one umbrella, leveraging economies of scale and centralized resources to optimize operations, marketing, and growth. And so working with one to this date remains as one of the game-changers in my eCom manager life.
Process oriented
I’ve often struggled with creating processes for different clients. I thought each Shopify store is different; there’s no one size fits all formula. But after working with the bright minds at DF, I find myself slightly mistaken. With some brainstorming and constant process audits, I was able to create my own Shopify Playbook which identifies rinse and repeat processes for different stores. This playbook leaves some room or an allowance for the customizations that would be specific per brand - but given that all else other processes will remain similar, the playbook definitely takes out the overwhelm for clients, teammates, and myself. Because if it doesn’t, I don’t think managing 20+ stores at one time would be manageable for ‘lil ol me.
Team collaborations
I am a fan of remote work and I might never go back to working in the office. And working with this team that prioritized “remote work” just showed me that excellent things can still be done even though we don’t see each other in person. We did have regular zoom meetings, and we utilize other communication channels, like slack and emails. We also used an excellent project management tool like Asana. Great things can still be done without clocking in.
Keep it simple
Optimizing stores are done differently depending on the brand, niche, and other factors but here’s the thing. We don’t have to make it complicated. Keeping it simple, making templates, and such actually go a long way (far longer than what we give it credit for). We sometimes think that going fancy with things helps create the brand image and while that is true to some extent, it shouldn’t be a show stopper for anyone to outrageously scale their business. Keeping it simple can get you to six project and seven figures too!
What to watch out for
Anything on repeat gets polished faster. Imagine upgrading 13+ Shopify brands to Shopify 2.0 . I do believe that having worked on the multiple Shopify sites at DF took my skills to the next level.
Project management skills
With multiple websites comes multiple managers, vendors, and teammates who are going to want a piece of update every now and then. With the importance of feedback and visibility, your project management skills are going to be challenged and so if you are up to task, you need to learn how to be organized fast or else wolves will keep coming for you.
I personally loved working with this company. It has helped me polish my skills in Shopify, ecommerce management, at the same time, it gave me the chance to learn new skills that would be applicable in the whole ecommerce ecosystem.