Linus and I were Army mates. We lost contact but reconnected while he was doing his grocery shopping at Tiong Bahru Market. Linus was running his own business selling apparel online. We decided to combine expertise and thus Marketfresh was born.
Our plan was to run Marketfresh on a part time basis. Linus took care of the website and other technical aspects while I managed vendors and fulfillment. Our idea was simple enough. Collate groceries from stallholders in Tiong Bahru Market and sell them online.
The idea seemed simple at first glance and I thought we could have our website up and running in 3 months. As we went along, we found that even the simplest process or the smallest detail can throw up big challenges. In the end we took 1 year to launch.
The first two weeks we had zero sales. I thought the year long process of getting the website up and running was half the battle won. In reality, the battle had not even began. We are starting from zero.
We started to pay for google and Facebook ads to boost our exposure. Eventually we had our first customer. After a month, we had an average of 3 customers a week. Sales was very poor but it was a blessing in disguise. We discovered flaws in our fulfillment processes that never occurred to us before we actually began fulfillment on the ground. We had time to implement changes to smoothen our buying and delivery process. However, sales continued to languish and Linus and I decided to we had to devote more time to Marketfresh to make it work.
Doing it on our free time will not cut it anymore.
*If you missed Part one of the story, read it here.*
** There will be a total of 4 parts in The Story Of MarketFresh, so stay tuned for part 3 next week. **
