Kyozou Blog

How relevant are the comments penned here by John Kennedy of Silicon Republic about Google customers and how they are the value of a company combining with employees in the wireless world.

I like the way John Herlihy of Google states “Customers today have more choices and are more aware of our competitors’ offerings. Unless we can serve them 24/7, 365 days a year, competitors will eat our lunch”.

Do you find this is true today or starting  to become more real in your daily business life?

When considering what and how to share your messages with clients is always a challenge for online marketers.  In this article by Vangie Beal I see all the validation for being transparent through 360 degress, that is with yourself, your colleagues and most importantly with your clients.

A few years ago after becoming a convert to Tom Sant’s  ideology after reading his first book “Persuasive Business Proposals”, I was fortunate to be asked to participate with him in a webinar illustrating how effective persuasive proposals can be used at every step of the sales process, not simply waiting till the close. You can catch his words “Messages That Matter”, and I would recommend that your time will always be well invested.

You may also like to read another of his books, “The Giants of Sales“, which takes a look at some of the most famous sales names in the past century. Tom looks at thier success and captures the essence of their success in this interesting read. Enjoy!

An interesting viewpoint from McKinsey Quarterly about the Canadian economy and your money and you may have to register to receive the full text – enjoy.

Ina has an interesting blog going on regarding the challenges online resellers encounter while using UsPs as their shipping solution.

Take a look and add some feedback regarding your experiences with shipping.

Having recently signed onto Google Buzz, and I have also been involved with a trial of Google Wave too, I was looking to find out how I might leverage the opportunity of Google Buzz without creating too much extra work. Currently I have a presence on Facebook and LinkedIn and find these two networks give me great feed back on my circle of friends while still allowing me to lead a life away from a computer.

This said I was pleasantly surprised when I found the following discussion in my Google Buzz this morning and thought I would share it as it clearly explains the opportunity for Buzz; Michelle – many thanks for taking the time to inform me.

http://chelpixie.com/blog/2010/02/12/how-to-market-with-googles-social-search/

So after a short sabbatical the Kyozou blog is back and welcome to all those individuals who asked for a place to communicate with us, please do so.

I can be reached at sales (at) kyozou.com

Introducing a new site and now, a new blog.  We want to officially welcome everyone to the Kyozou blog.

To begin, here’s a bit of history about us:
Kyozou’s roots were planted six years ago in what really seemed like the pre-dawn of mainstream online selling.  Back then, we were a small group of eBay sellers in need of a tool to sell more and do it faster.  We had more product than we could sell and that was chipping away at our bottom line.  After trying and frying every major seller tool available at the time, we decided to build something on our own.  Our first challenge was to speed up the shipping process.  At that time and as Canadians, PayPal was great at money transactions but when it came to shipping, we had to play the “cut and paste” game for several hours each day to get the customer’s address from PayPal into our shipper’s software.  “Merchant” was born.  Merchant was a small app that would read in paid orders from PayPal and plug them into our shipping software automatically – that shaved hours off each day and shipping mistakes became a thing of the past.  When our shipper caught on, they began sharing Merchant with other sellers like us.  The next challenge was to automate listings and to make product entry faster and easier.  We needed a way to speed things up.

Virtuman, the first incarnation of what Kyozou is today, was a collection of many tools we developed over several months.  Eventually, we had built enough tools to automate our inventory entry, listing process, checkout and payment, and shipping.  We were happy but just when we thought we were done, we began to receive tons of feedback from customers and other sellers who had heard about us or had seen our checkout.  Rumor spread and before we knew it, we had a whole other business on our hands.  In the months that followed, we continued development on Virtuman and tweaked it so that it was able to accommodate multiple users (or customers).  Written in a different software architecture, Virtuman was Kyozou’s predecessor.  Since Virtuman was originally built for one merchant, us, we knew that the time would soon come when major changes would be necessary if it went mainstream.  Starting from scratch but knowing exactly what we wanted, we began development of Kyozou in early 2004.  In June of that year, we debuted Kyozou at the eBay Live! convention in New Orleans.  Kyozou was an instant hit.  Sellers loved us, eBay was impressed, and the competition was not happy.  When we got back home, the phone began to ring.  It seemed like overnight, we went from being an online retailer to a large software company.  With almost every new merchant, there was something more to learn, something else to add.  Over the next few months, the Kyozou system grew in leaps and bounds.  Built to fit the specific needs of real sellers, Kyozou quickly became the ultimate solution for online business management.  By 2005, Kyozou had become the most versatile and best supported tool available to online merchants.

Today, Kyozou continues to grow as a leading management solution for online retailers.  We have successfully integrated hundreds of powerful tools to fit sellers and business models of every type.

This blog is maintained by Kyozou staff and will be updated regularly.  Be sure and check in to read about, and comment on recent developments about Kyozou and the world of e-commerce.

Your friends at Kyozou