How SiAura Material Achieved a Buy Box Share of 95%

Founded:
2013

Industry:
Hobby and craft supplies

Articles online at Amazon:
approx. 2900

Shipments: 
approx. 350/Day

Background:

The origin story of SiAura Material – one of the leading brands on Amazon.com for craft and hobby supplies – isn’t the typical “I made my hobby into my job” story that you would assume at first. “In fact, I never did much crafting myself; I’m actually a computer scientist,” explains founder and CEO Annemarie Raluca Schuster. “At the time, I simply saw a niche and realized that there was no company selling craft supplies on a large scale on the German marketplace.”

As a result, Annemarie founded the company SiAura Material. She quickly discovered, however, that such an endeavor requires a lot of work and perseverance. “In addition to constant market analysis, I had to acquire the necessary knowledge on the fly, for example in areas such as law, accounting, forecasting or pricing – you don’t just learn these things from one day to the next.”

Challenge:

Topics such as correct budget allocation, price calculation and price optimization in particular, are essential for running a successful business. “Of course, there is also a lot to invest in your own business,” explains Annemarie. “This can also lead to spending more than you earn at the beginning – which was indeed the case with SiAura Material at the time.” This made it all the more important for Annemarie to price her products appropriately from the start, in order to generate enough margin and profit for a healthy business.

At the same time, Annemarie also emphasizes that the field of e-commerce, and especially the Amazon environment, is highly characterized by change. Companies cannot simply rely on existing processes or setups, but must always deal with various challenges and must always stay one step ahead through innovation in order to sell successfully on Amazon.

The team at SiAura Material can attest to this: “We regularly have to deal with delivery bottlenecks, but also strong competition or internal process changes,” Annemarie tells us. “The drastic price changes also pose a significant challenge. On Amazon, the price of a product sometimes changes 100 times a day.”

For SiAura Material, the high pressure on margin and price coupled with the constant changes in the marketplace is one of the main challenges. How does SiAura Material align its own pricing strategy in an environment that is so heavily influenced by competition and the price fluctuations that come with it? “At the end of the day, that can only be done with software; it’s not even feasible manually,” explains Annemarie.

Solution:

With this in mind, SiAura Material began looking early on for ways to optimize the prices of their products sold through Amazon toward the Buy Box without losing sight of margin and profit. “I knew from the start that I wasn’t going to sell merchandise without being able to effectively control the price – and I knew I wasn’t going to do that manually anyway.”

For this reason, SiAura Material has been using the SellerLogic Repricer for Amazon since 2016. This has allowed the company to achieve a significantly higher Buy Box percentage of 95% and see more sales for merchandise. “The price history and Buy Box Share can also be tracked by any user in the tool, which is very convenient.”

The intuitive user interface also makes the Repricer very easy to use. “I also like the fact that we can run multiple strategies for different product groups and that we always have access to the extensive knowledge base and support.”

If SiAura’s development and success confirm one thing above all, it’s that entrepreneurs can’t and don’t have to do everything themselves. In addition to an excellent team, it is essential to automate relevant but time-consuming processes. With the SellerLogic Repricer, SiAura Material is able to act both competitively and economically.