Success Stories: Paul Bloor from Celebrate Gifts

Paul Bloor runs Celebrate Gifts, selling a range of unique gifts such as chocolate bouquets and food hampers through his eBay and Amazon shops, as well as on his own website. Paul tells us about the challenges of staying on top of orders when you’re selling across a number of channels, and how he’s overcome them.

Why did you start selling online?

We opened our shop in June last year, and then launched online with eBay in November, and Amazon in January. We decided to start selling online as a way of opening up our products to a larger audience and complementing our sales in store, and we now achieve 85% of our turnover through online sales.

What have been your biggest challenges selling online, and how have you overcome them?

Our biggest challenge is keeping up to date with all of the orders from so many different channels. It was at times difficult to ensure that everything comes together from our own website, and our eBay and Amazon shops, so that it can be processed smoothly and any queries are reviewed and dealt with easily. Zenstores has helped massively with this, providing all the information in one place and communicating with the various selling channels to remove a lot of the time-consuming tasks.

Why do you use Zenstores?

Zenstores provides us with a user-friendly platform that syncs with our various selling channels and takes away a lot of the hassle involved in processing online sales. It allows us to communicate well with our customers, and provides us with all of the information that we need in just a few clicks.

What are your top recommendations for someone starting out selling online?

Try to make your shop as visible as possible to potential customers, and sell on as many different channels as your time will allow. Obviously using a platform like Zenstores will help you to manage your time better and allow you to operate on more channels.