present the award to Matthew John, Mike Barbero, and Ed Brooks of ProfitSourcery.com
A tech company which helps people sell goods online has been named Global Start-Up Of The Year at the Wales Start-Up Of The Year Awards.
ProfitSourcery.com, based at Caerphilly start-up hub Welsh ICE, helps hundreds of Amazon sellers across the globe to find and sell online.
The company, which launched in 2015, has a six-figure turnover and employs four full-time coders.
Founder Ed Brooks said: “I’m proud of my team. I was genuinely surprised to win – I knew we had a great idea, but the competition was so tough. There are some amazing Welsh businesses.
“Thousands of people sell online every day. Many of them waste hours trying to source products. ProfitSourcery really works, so we entered our category because we knew a prestigious award like this would help give people the confidence to give it a go.”
Mr Brooks came up with the idea for his online business four years ago.
He said: “I talked to a friend who didn’t want to go back to work after her second child was born.
“She decided to try and make some money selling online. Six months later she was back in her regular job. She couldn’t find enough fast-selling stock that would make money after all the fees.
“It often comes as a surprise that many online sellers buy from well-known retail stores and re-sell those items on Amazon. The trick, of course, is to find products that are much cheaper than Amazon’s price. And that’s not easy.
“I thought it was a problem that could be solved with a bunch of computing power. Lots of YouTube videos were showing people how to manually compare Amazon’s prices with regular online stores.
“This seemed pretty tedious and inefficient to me, and it’s an ideal job for software. I spoke to an angel investor and we established ProfitSourcery.com to do this.”
The company now analyses two million retail products per month and compares them to Amazon’s prices.
Mr Brooks said: “A Barbie doll selling for £6.50 in one store may be selling on Amazon for £15. That’s enough to pay the commission fees and leave a nice profit.
“About one in 5,000 products we analyse meet our criteria.
“Since launching in 2015, and in the States last October, we have helped lots of people make money – we find the products for them to buy and sell on.”
Would-be sellers need a few hundred pounds as seed money for stock. ProfitSourcery.com offers them a free seven-day trial.
Mr Brooks stressed Amazon selling isn’t a scheme to ‘get rich quick’ and that sellers need to learn the ropes.
He said: “We provide over 22 training guides for newcomers to the scene, which has helped us build a great network of new online sellers.”