Episode 1: Welcome to The Business of eCommerce

Episode Transcript Hello. My name is Charles Palleschi and welcome to The Business of eCommerce podcast. I'd like to kick off this first episode by talking about a little bit about myself, what I'd like to do with this podcast, a couple of show ideas, and give an idea of where we kind of see things going here. So to get started, my name is Charles. I'm the founder of Spark Shipping. What Spark Shipping is software for eCommerce retailers to help them automate the connections with their vendors. A vendor is a manufacturer, a wholesaler, a drop shipper or a warehouse. How I got started in this business is in 2010, I went off on my own. I used to work a corporate job and said, "I want to do freelance consulting." I started doing some app development and some software development for various businesses. Somewhere along that road, I ended up purchasing a small eCommerce site. I ran that for some time. I built that up, worked with maybe about five different vendors. Orders went out each day to the different vendors and I said, "There has to be some sort of way to automate this." So, I ended up building what's now called Spark Shipping. Fast forward to 2014, and the actual name and the product Spark Shipping was launched. Uh, later on that year, I ended up focusing solely on Spark Shipping, make that- making that my core business. Uh, and now, ever since, me and my team have run Spark Shipping. So why I decided to start this podcast is because, on a daily basis, I am able to talk to many eCommerce retailers, different vendors. Uh, I do a lot of the sales here at Spark Shipping. So, I talk to a lot of different folks everyday. I hear a lot of what's working, what's not working, uh, different questions, different issues people run into, different ways people have solved those issues. A lot of different things. The benefit of Spark Shipping i- Spark Shipping is we work with lots of different clients, lots of different types of businesses, so it gives me a pretty good idea of a different, uh ... a view of the landscape and what works and what's not working. And I'm hoping to be able to share that with everyone out there, and hopefully some of you find that useful. The next coming weeks, I'm thinking we'll try to do an episode each week, maybe 10 to 15 minutes. Uh, we'll have different topics each week, hopefully one topic per episode. Some episodes will be me just talking to the camera like this, talking directly to you, answering, talking about that one particular topic. Other ones, maybe we'll do some sort of interviews. I have a few guests that I want to bring on, uh, with some different subject matter. So, we could do that as well. Let me know what you like, what you don't like, what works, what doesn't. If you have some topics in particular you'd like to hear, I'd love to, talk about that. You can reach, reach me directly on Twitter @charlespal, that's Charles P-A-L, on Twitter, or always by email. It's just [email protected]. I'll be on the lookout for like topics, similar things that'll interest folks, and I'd love to get your feedback. So, hopefully talk to you soon. See you, see you very soon in the following episodes and we'll chat more. Thanks. Have a good one.