Welcome to another episode of The Ecommerce Braintrust podcast hosted by Acadia's Head of Retail Marketplaces Services Julie Spear.

Today, we are joined by two special guests: Paul Sonneveld, CEO & Co-Founder of MerchantSpring, and Acadia's Director of Retail Operations, Jordan Ripley.

We're diving into the complex decisions behind building vs buying software at an agency and SaaS company, using customer feedback to shape what you deliver to the market, and where we see the industry headed in this multichannel e-commerce world.

Make sure you tune in to find out more!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In this episode, Julie, Paul, and Jordan discuss:

• Origins and evolution of MerchantSpring: from an in-house tool for managing multiple e-commerce platforms like Amazon and eBay to a shift towards SaaS for agencies.

• Multi-channel support and feature parity across different platforms.

• Specific focus on agency needs and saving customers' time by providing a unified interface.

• Balancing between roadmap developments and quality of life improvements.

• Core focus areas: feature parity, profitability, and retail media support using agile methodology.

• Importance of customer lifetime value and sourcing share analysis.

• Challenges of overinvesting in features like eBay item specifics, driven by local market demands but limited broader interest.

• The evolution of the company's approach to idea generation based on client feedback.

• Future developments include enhancing retail media, profitability analysis, and expanding into Southeast Asia and Japan.

• Homogenizing retail data across various channels.

• Advantages and strategies for early considerations of data homogenization.

• Exploration of clean room developments to unify client data.

• Future updates and developments to look forward to from MerchantSpring.