Interviewed by Minter Dial as part of its “MinterDialogue”, Kamel Tansaout, CEO and co-founder of Marjory, talks about the origin of Marjory, its entrepreneurial history, the e-commerce and marketplaces market, and its future prospects. And much more… The topics covered in the interview are detailed in the script below, with the corresponding time references of the podcast. To listen to it, it’s here!
0:29 – 1:20: Introduction of Kamel and Marjory by Minter Dial
1:40 – 1:54: Kamel who are you?
entrepreneur, expert in marketplaces, passionate about e-commerce
2:05 – 4:20: Background in marketplaces & definition of marketplaces
ex Director of Intershop in France (B2B e-commerce) – conviction: the marketplace is a business model before being a technology – joined the beginnings of Mirakl – challenge of convincing that marketplace was the way of doing business that was going to impose itself in the future – development of B2B activity at Mirakl – transformation of existing organization or launch of new marketplace activities at the customers – Amazon had become number 1 in the world of e-commerce
4:41 – 6:30: Marketplaces penetration in e-commerce + traditional business models
Marketplaces are already old. Start from the will to be able to position themselves on a business in front of retailers who already had a strong geographical network, logistic circuits, etc. Today top 10 e-commerce sellers are marketplaces – in France 30% of e-commerce operated on marketplaces. Marketplaces have become a must. The first competitor of google is Amazon!
6:46 – 7:41: Marketplaces and communities.
2 types of customers in a marketplace: the seller (who sells) and the buyer (who buys). Sellers are communities of sellers who structure themselves around services (example of flow integrators). Objective sharing and common values.
8:23 – 10:28: Marketplace, margins and profitability?
Marketplace pure player different from a retailer who adds a marketplace and also new types of marketplaces like platforms. Amazon profitability in terms of e-commerce distributor comes from the marketplace. Amazon distribution is impacted by costs (logistics, transport) + promotion / marketing. But marketplace model profitable and virtuous because charges are borne by sellers against access to the market.
11:13 – 17:08: Stake of the visibility of sellers on the marketplace
A marketplace without sellers is like an empty store. If good brand, traffic, sellers come. Marketplace brings agility. The marketplace operator must have actions to animate the sellers. Need to offer them value. Services. Marketplace = comes back to consider sellers as customers. Internet and e-commerce is the revenge of the brands by the large distribution. Access to a formerly hidden customer channel. Change management issue. Transformation requires thinking about the expectations of customers but also those of its suppliers. The challenge of differentiation.
17:20 – 22:01: Marjory – Unique Selling Proposal – Ideal customers
Marjory was born from the experience of its founders. Confronted with technical but also functional and organizational problems. Education issue. Marjory is a non-code platform on which we show a business porches. Aligning customers on a common process. Getting developers and business units to speak the same language. First communication between humans is done by drawing. Marjory wants to create a universal language. Real issue in tech. Services Providers solutions are pre-integrated in Marjory. Universal connectors. Insert the Marketplace project into the organization. Tooling the digital transformation of companies. To be able to recover the legacy of the company & its organization.
22:30 – 24:44: Marjory and boosters
Boosters are business impacts for sellers or buyers. Accelerate the payment of your sellers with a FinexKap partner. Real added value created by the seller. Differentiation element. Willingness to create more value to share it better. Community of customers, integrators, consultants, service providers. Starling? bank approach
25:20 – 29:39: Marjory’s clients – ideal clients?
Client who wants to launch or who has launched and wants to evolve their marketplace. Proof of Concept (PoC) Marketplace to validate their idea. Respond to financial or time issues: Marjory allows them to have perfect execution. Customers already equipped with solutions (eg- Mirakl). Consultants and integrators. Evolution of these professions towards a consultant-integrator. With Marjory you can design your workflow (combine intellectual and operational aspects). For integrator, before sale eat margin so more slack to integrate. Not good for the customer relationship. Marjory is a gas pedal of integration and execution. Marjory is a tool to build customer loyalty.
30:02 – 32:55: Making Marjory known: how?
We start with the network (human, word of mouth). Alexandre AMIOT. The network knows our expertise. We exploit the community aspect. We rely on our service providers for whom we accelerate integration times. Have vouchers to install Marjory at their customer’s site. Use of the network effect. We do not escape Google. SEO. SEA. Twitter/Linkedin accounts. Search for a partner agency. CRM.
33:15 – 34:32: Marketplaces. Place, reference exchange forum?
Not yet. That’s what we want to create. Ecosystem. Willingness to create the big marketplace family. Expose the nuggets to the community.
35:04 – 36:36: Entrepreneurial role models. Entrepreneurs who inspire you?
Yoann Le Berrigaud. Philippe Corot, the founder of Mirakl. Pioneers of the Web in France. Likes affordable entrepreneurs. Marjory’s origin: tele-operators who facilitated communication by connecting cables with each other. Facilitating communication between parties.
37:49 – 38:26: Follow and understand Marjory. How to do it?
Marjory.io. Linkedin. Twitter. WeWork 33 Rue Lafayette 75009 2nd floor.
