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Growing An Ecom Empire In A Saturated Niche Market
- 2022/12/22
- 再生時間： 38 分
- ポッドキャスト
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サマリー
あらすじ・解説
Hello, e-commerce friends. Today I'm with an absolute legend in the e-commerce world. His name is Ronnie Teja. Ronnie has been around for a very long while. He has been speaking at different events, which are very legendary in the e-commerce world, such as the Affiliate World. He was a speaker in Dubai and also in Barcelona. He also attended the e-commerce world global as a speaker, e-commerce summit in Africa. So he was traveling quite a bit around the globe here, and he's also an attendant and a speaker of the eCommerceFuel summit in Palm Springs. Personally I think, Ronnie, I know you already. Was it 2017 or 2018? I'm not exactly sure about the year, but it was at a Dynamite Circle event, and I remember us talking at the swimming pool and this is how we bonded a few years ago. And now I have this opportunity to finally interview you here at this podcast. So welcome to the show. Table of Contents Ronnie Teja Introduction Sure. So my name is Ronnie Teja, I worked in e-commerce for what people call in older terms. So I've been around in the e-commerce industry for about a decade now. So yeah, 2023. So it's a long time. So on January 1st, 2023 is when I launched my company. So I run a portfolio of 15 different websites, Branzio Watches being one of them, which is one of the primary sites that we run. And yeah, I mean collectively I have about 75 plus employees. So we've grown from what was supposed to be a dream of mine to live on a beach in Thailand to something a lot larger than we'd expected. So super happy to be here with friends and moving forward, just finished Affiliate World in Bangkok as one of the speakers. So yeah, definitely a pleasure to be here.But anyhow, when I started studying graphic design in Canada, my brothers pushed me to come to China. They told me that China's the future and I should definitely come check it out, and perhaps consider studying here. So I got here at 17 years old. I had done one semester in university in Canada, and at that point I started studying Chinese, and I excelled at that and actually was offered a job right out of school as a creative assistant for a big PR firm. That's how my professional career started, even though in the back of my mind I always wanted to get into fashion. But I was young, the money was great, it was an opportunity, so I took it.So, I worked with this company. I grew up in the ranks, working there for five years. Within the second year, I was promoted to creative director. I, by the way, taught myself everything about web design, graphic design, as well as some sales and marketing, all self-taught and grew really quickly in the company, the creative director on the second year.And within the fourth year, I became one of the managing directors for one of our departments, managing things like visuals, and so on, for some big clients we had; for example, Bacardi Group. We were working with alcohol brands, furniture brands, and so on. I was managing part of the events, the visual creation, etc. That lasted a total of five years. Towards the fifth year, I decided that that was it. I had gained enough experience, and I really wanted to start my own business in fashion.At that point, I had a friend who actually was interested in partnering up. He offered to give me equity. He had a lot of money, and he believed in the idea that I had, and wanted to give me equity. I approached my family at that point saying, "Can you guys help me to bring the product to life?" since that was their expertise. And my family spun on me and said, "Don't take money from that guy. Let's partner up, us, and let's start this business as a family business. And we'll help you out for the procurement, the supply chain, all that kind of stuff. And you can focus on design and marketing." And in the end, that's the route I took. We signed an agreement, my brothers and I.And at that point, I actually went to fashion school. I wanted to really do this the right way,