Merchant A, a small UK-based business, has grown its business efficiently thanks to trading automation.
'Trading automation is “like having an extra salesperson”'
Before automation – manual and repetitive
Merchant A had been a member of Liv-ex for a number of years before automating. As a small business, it benefitted from the ease of selling to other merchants around the world in one place, through one account.
However, offering wine for sale was not as efficient as it could have been. Members of its small team needed to manually add wine to Liv-ex, then manually remove it from their own system. They didn’t have time to list as much stock as they’d have liked, and there was always a risk of human error leading to double selling.
They saw an opportunity to use automation to remove this friction, recognising that if they could list stock on Liv-ex automatically, they could sell more wine without adding any more staff.
What they did
The aim was to have a system that was perfectly in sync with Liv-ex. It would mean that when wine is added for sale their system, it could be offered on Liv-ex at the click of a button. Likewise, as soon it is sold, the offer should be removed immediately.
They used a cloud-based stock management system for the wine trade, which enabled them to do this efficiently. An independent developer, who liaised with Liv-ex’s support team, helped to get them started.
The results – Sales increase exponentially
Merchant A’s sales on Liv-ex increased exponentially as soon as automation was switched on.
It’s easy to understand why this happened. Without the time constrains of listing so manually, they were suddenly able to offer more stock for sale. At the same time as sales increased, admin decreased.
One member of the team told us that he enjoys waking up in the morning to find that multiple cases have traded overnight, probably to markets he isn’t otherwise targeting.
“It’s like having an extra salesperson”, he told us.
After the initial investment and set-up, automation now runs itself. The team look forward to ongoing, and increasing, sales through automation.
*This member opted to remain anonymous. We’ve respected that by referring to them as “Merchant A” throughout the article.
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