Ebuyer is anticipating growth in 2024, its CEO said, despite acknowledging that his first 365 days in charge has been “more of a transformation than we anticipated”.
Richard Marsden took the reins of the £175m-revenue e-tailer at the start of April 2023 when he and business partner Mark Reed acquired it from West Retail Group. It ranked 20th in the recent Oxygen 250.
“We found some things we liked, and some things we didn’t like”
Drawing 70-75% of sales from its consumer website, Ebuyer’s main stomping ground has already claimed one victim in 2024 in the form of e-tailer Box Ltd.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen following its ‘acquiversary’ last week, Marsden conceded the first 12 months has involved some heavy lifting.
“Like any acquisition, you find some things you really like and some things you don’t really like, and just have to go through a lot of change. It’s probably more of a transformation than we originally anticipated, but we’re making good progress.
“It was an arm’s-length-owned business for a long time, so it suffered from a lack of investment and direction, but we’re starting to see, certainly over the last three months, some green shoots from the work we’ve put in.”
Ebuyer’s consumer business serves four million end users.
While conceding that the consumer market is “challenging”, Marsden said Ebuyer’s B2B arm – which is driven by a team of 22 sales staff and targets sub-100-employee firms – has “started out the traps well” in 2024.
“If anyone says they’re flying in consumer, they’re probably not quite telling you the truth, but our B2B business, which is doing quite well, is an area of focus until we wait for consumer confidence to come back,” Marsden said.
“Our projection for this year is growth but that relies on our .com business being successful – and that relies on confidence returning to the consumer market. We think we’ll see, and the market indicates we’ll see, consumer confidence starting to come back at the back end of this year, then 2025 will be the year the market normalises again.”
“We’re not short on opportunities”
Where has Marsden focused his efforts when it comes to Ebuyer’s transformation over the last 12 months?
“The digital age is upon us and, probably, Ebuyer hasn’t been through a digital transformation before, so there’s a lot of work to do just to get the business to standard,” Marsden responded.
“We’ve invested heavily in our marketing function. For the first time in Ebuyer’s history we have a marketing director, which to the outside world would seem odd considering 75% of our business is coming off the back of a website.
“Ebuyer should be further on its digital transformation journey than it is. We’ve signed a new agency out of Leeds. It’s a big investment that we really expect to change the needle on our .com business. And we’ve completely restructured the marketing function. They’re the bits we had to come in and focus on.”
These investments will provide Ebuyer with the foundation “to grow in a structured way”, Marsden said.
“As we presented to our partners [last] Thursday, we’re not short on opportunities; we just have to select the right ones,” Marsden said.
“We’ve got 560,000 SMEs on our books and four million end users. If we utilise that with the new marketing function, that becomes a very powerful opportunity for us later this year and next year, and that’s even without the market stabilising.
“When the market stabilises, that’s when we start to get excited.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
