6 min read
Ekokul - from dream to successful e-commerce
What do you sell in your shop?
Our original business idea was to offer organic and fair trade toys and baby products, so our customers were mainly parents with young children. We wanted to sell toys that would be the obvious choice over mass-produced plastic toys without a second thought. With increased awareness, our customers have broadened their demand for good goods in other product categories, so you could say that it is thanks to our customers that we can now offer goods in hygiene, health, cleaning, household etc. We are always grateful for our customers' feedback, who give us tips on items that are missing from the conventional trade. With the broadened range, we now have customers of all ages. Parents with older children continue to be loyal to us even when they are past the age of toys.
Why did you decide to start an online shop?
The idea for Ekokul was born in 2007. My wife Anna and I had always discussed different business ideas and had a dream of running our own business. When we realized that there was a gap in the market for organic and eco-friendly toys and children's products, we started working on launching a webshop. We looked at England, the USA and even Italy and found a number of products that became the first small range in the Ekokul webshop, which we launched in June 2008.
How has your e-commerce developed since its inception?
Turnover has remained at about the same level for all the years we have been doing e-commerce. We have chosen not to expand, but instead keep the company quite personal and small in order to maintain our own freedom, but also the feeling of a company that cares and takes care of its customers. The company has been and is a one-man business and what we cannot do ourselves we outsource. For example, another company takes care of our warehouse and packs our goods.
In which countries do you sell your products?
We started our sales in Sweden, but now we also have a Finnish and a Danish online store with customer service in both Finnish and Danish. Some sales also go to Norway, but this is not a market that we actively pursue.
What made you choose Abicart as your e-commerce platform?
When we started in 2008, there were not many Swedish e-commerce platforms to choose from. A survey of different platforms had given Textalk a good review and the price was also appealing. It was a perfect platform for a start-up company that didn't want to incur too many initial costs and where you could relatively easily create your own store by trial and error.
What are the main challenges you faced in running an e-commerce business and how did you overcome them?
Google is and has always been the biggest challenge. The rules of the game for SEO are constantly changing and the organic search results have been pushed further and further down by search and shopping ads. Getting conversions through organic searches has become more difficult and today we have to advertise significantly more to drive traffic to our webshop.
How do you market your webshop?
We have worked continuously with SEO and content marketing since the start, which has given us a healthy balance in our traffic mix. Organic traffic, bloggers and media attention have given us a lot of free traffic. We have worked with newsletters since the start and managed to build a really good customer database that still gives good dividends. We haven't engaged in analog advertising except for a few tests. When we were a start-up company, our business idea was quite unique and we got a lot of media attention which provided free marketing. Today, we market ourselves primarily through Google Shopping, but also some collaborations with bloggers and influencers. But the best marketing comes from our customers. It costs nothing and gives the best results.
How have you dealt with competition in the market, and standing out from similar e-retailers?
Competition has really intensified over the past 5 years and today there are several stores that have the same or similar business concept. In addition, the largest e-commerce companies have started selling several of the products that we were previously alone in marketing in our store. We have worked a lot with newsletters, social media and a fast and service-oriented customer service that really makes customers happy. Over the years, we have also built up a certain "trust" and been very concerned about customer relations and customer satisfaction. This means that customers buy from us again because they know that we do not sell just any items, but good things that we ourselves can stand for.
What are the main advantages of running a webshop?
Definitely the freedom to be your own boss and control your own time. It's difficult to get rich from a webshop, but the freedom that the work provides means much more than a high salary. You always have your work in your pocket on your mobile phone and can manage the webshop wherever you are in the world. There is no better job.
How have you used feedback from customers and visitors to the webshop to improve the store and the customer experience?
We get a lot of great and good feedback from our customers, but unfortunately we have been bad at showing this in our store. This is something we should get better at and market to new customers.
Which subscription with us do you use and why?
We use the PLUS subscription. We have had it almost every year. We have not benefited from PRO because we do not have connections to business systems.
Which functions/integrations are important to you?
The ability to use the same admin and item register for several different webshops in different languages. It would have been too difficult to administer several shops if the different languages had been in different admin systems.
What future plans do you have for your webshop?
In the long term, we need to do a facelift of the shop because it was a few years ago that we updated the design.
What tips would you give to others who are thinking of starting a webshop?
Think long-term and be persistent. Expect it to take at least 5 years to build a webshop that starts to generate profit. Do as much of the work as possible yourself in the beginning to keep costs down. Work actively with SEO, it pays off in the long run. Read up on SEO and do the work yourself, it will usually be both better and cheaper, Niclas concludes.
Visit EkokulClick here and start your webshop - Free demo!