With each passing day, e-Commerce is becoming more popular and the number of people, turning to online shopping to avoid all the hassles and save time, is growing continuously. There is no denying the fact that e-Commerce Sector holds huge potential in this age of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Technology is deeply integrated into this sector and many young entrepreneurs are coming to this sector keeping up with this new trend. Then there are offline businesses that want to expand online and offer better services to its customers. Website is the most suitable platform to conduct any online business. However, one must possess certain level of technical knowledge to successfully perform all the day-to-day operations via website. There are many entrepreneurs in Bangladesh who does not have enough knowledge about website. For them developing a website, maintenance, and upgrade is a highly complicated and expensive task.
An e-Commerce website is a highly dynamic site containing numerous features. A good e-Commerce website contains product display, check-out system, website design, domain hosting, design theme, payment and the list goes on. If an entrepreneur wants to automate all the day-to-day operations of his online store, then he needs to have a variety of management tools at his disposal. For example, inventory management tool is necessary to maintain customer database, keep track of the number of products in the store in a certain period of time, and process incoming orders. Analysis reporting tool is necessary to keep track of the top-selling products, customer feedback, profit-loss calculation. There is also the digital marketing tool that is very important for the online store operators.
To successfully operate an online store, an entrepreneur must have sound technical knowledge about different management tools and website management. The reality is many e-Commerce entrepreneurs have little or no technical knowledge. Many entrerepreneurs find these skills very difficult or impossible to acquire. Even if an entrepreneur wants to include all the features and tools, he would have to spend a lot of money on setting up a large office and hiring expert persons which is not possible for many small online store operators. For this reason, many e-Commerce entrepreneurs fail to sustain and grow their businesses. Storrea (https://www.storrea.com) started its journey with a goal to provide easy solutions to all these technical difficulties for Bangladeshi e-Commerce entrepreneurs.
Currently, there are many international platforms that are successfully providing a wide range of technical solutions to budding e-Commerce entrepreneurs around the world.
Noticing this trend, four enterprising young men came together and established Storrea, an online business platform that provides a whole host of technical solutions to local e-Commerce entrepreneurs, in early 2015. Storrea is a cloud-based platform that contains all the necessary tools and features required to successfully run an online store. Any entrepreneur with very little technical knowledge can easily set up his or her store on Storrea which is truly unbelievable. In the middle of 2015, Storrea launched its beta version. Following merchant feedbacks, extensive testing, and carefully developed pricing plans, it officially launched in January 2016.
Developing a highly user-friendly platform that would fulfill all the requirements of the local merchants at an affordable cost is the main goal of Storrea. The platform is continuously upgrading itself based on its analysis and customer feedback.
Storrea is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that provides all types of services and tools necessary to run a successful e-Commerce site. At present, running an e-Commerce website on open source platforms requires a person to have deep technical knowledge. Added with it, security issues, acquiring services from various organizations, and running after developers, make the whole process a very highly time consuming and expensive undertaking. In this regard, using a platform like Storrea that contains all the open-source based solutions, is a better option.
Subscription-based model is riskfree. A merchant does not have to pay huge upfront fees. He pays for only what he uses. If he wants to further enrich his website by including more more options and features, then he would have to pay more. He need not pay in case he wants to discontinue. The biggest advantage of Storrea is that the merchant requires very little knowledge to develop and run a fully functional e-Commerce website on this platform and he has no scope of getting frustrated with the services.
Storrea offers Swopno, Sahos and Sofol subscription packages covering three months, six months and one year respectively. Before taking up full subscription, a merchant can also try their free 21-day trial . The company offers all sorts of technical assistance to its merchants. Aside from the subscription packages, Storrea offers VAS i.e. graphics, content, and marketing. They will also develop specific feature or design based on the merchant’s requirement. Storrea is an “all in one” service provider.
Storrea partnered with SSL Commerz, the most popular payment gateway of the country at present. SSL Commerz accepts payments via Visa, Mastercard, online banking, Rocket, Bkash and other options. In addition, Storrea partnered with SMS alert service and product delivery service.
Storrea also has its own blog site where it regularly publishes marketing, SEO, and other e-Commerce related articles that benefits thousands of entrepreneurs. Blog address:
Since its official launch in 2016 Storrea has been constantly working to establish itself as a reliable brand in Bangladesh. Initially, many merchants failed to realize all the benefits this platform has to offer, However, with time, many are now realizing its advantages and are showing interests to take its services. Storrea is serving more than 150 merchants which includes various niche product sellers i.e. eletronics, gadgets, fashion, cosmetics, medicine, handicrafts, books etc. A total of ten people including four co-founders are working full time in Storrea. It will also introduce some new features within March 2019.
Storrea founders’ goal is to make day-to-day operations of e-Commerce businesses very easy to perform and they are working everyday to achieve that goal. In future, Storrea will offer its services in the international market. It has been the long cherished goal of the founders to make Storrea a reliable international brand from Bangladesh.