INTERVIEW 社員インタビュー

Why I'm at Commerce Media

I was born in a rural area on a remote island and grew up in an environment where I had no choice but to rely on the web to obtain information. There are many times when I am grateful for the web, but the most memorable time was when I was taking the university entrance exam. There were no prep schools on the island, so it was difficult to get the latest information, and I felt lonely, but thanks to the web, I was able to catch up quickly. I had many experiences where the web saved me from the information gap, so I decided to work in a web-related field in the future.

This time, I would like to talk candidly about the experiences I had before joining Commerce Media.

What made you consider working in EC?

When I graduated, I wanted to work in a web-related business in a small or medium-sized company, where even new graduates are expected to take on responsibility in a tough environment, and improve my skills, so I joined a venture web production company. There, I was in charge of directing various websites, such as corporate websites, recruitment websites, and service websites for inquiries, for small and medium-sized businesses and sole proprietors.

In addition to creating new sites, I also proposed improvements to existing sites, so I listened to the client's issues, analyzed them, and uncovered potential issues. Thanks to this, I was able to work with companies in a variety of industries and business types, and it was a fun experience.

As I gained more experience, I began to think that I wanted to be able to provide support even after the website was delivered. As a country boy, I often used e-commerce as a consumer, so it was easy for me to imagine it, and I narrowed my search down to companies that operated e-commerce websites and had in-house operations.

First time e-commerce

Initially, I was offered the job to be in charge of managing the new brand's website, but in the end, they asked me to help out as much as I could, and I ended up being in charge of both the offensive (sales promotion) and defensive (management) aspects of the EC site, including the current brand.

Although I had no experience in EC itself when I joined the company, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of EC operations in general through the process of creating the systems, so I think it was a very valuable experience.

And the first action I took after being put in charge of EC was to open a store in a mall. As our main business is brick-and-mortar stores, it was mainly our repeat customers who used the EC site, so we first opened a store in a mall to attract new customers who were not familiar with the brand.

However, because the products they handled were a wide variety of small lots and inventory management was analog, the workload increased with sales, and they were unable to keep up with the demand, resulting in lost opportunities such as no stock when sales were due. It was clear that the cause of this was that there were too many manual steps in the operations, so they proceeded with the introduction of a system to systematize and run operations smoothly.

Strengthening operations

First of all, since the company was manually managing a wide variety of small lots of merchandise across multiple sales channels, they introduced an OMS (unified management system) and began systematizing order taking, shipping, and inventory management.

Next, we improved the order and shipping process, which was handled analogically by our own company. We could only ship about 100 items a day, and it was clear that this was hindering sales growth, so we outsourced it to an external warehouse to increase the number of items we could ship per day.

Then, the company decided to change its core system, and since the previous cart system was not able to handle it, we also migrated the cart system. At the time, we were considering Shopify or EC-CUBE, but since a lot of customization was required for the subscription purchase system and the method of linking with the core system, we decided on EC-CUBE, which offers more flexibility. If it were now, we might have made a different decision.

For our own e-commerce site, we needed to coordinate campaigns with the physical stores to allow users to use the e-commerce and physical stores seamlessly. As a result, we implemented some fairly complex functions, such as automatically changing campaign prices based on membership rank and running complex systems for subscription purchases for each product.

There are many other details to discuss, but we worked on a variety of areas and completed the development of the back-end system. However, as we were a company that mainly operated in physical stores, there were many constraints and our offensive options were limited, so we wanted to give the sales promotion side more freedom to act.

However, there is no company that has no restrictions at all, so I thought that an environment where I could interact with a variety of companies would be ideal, and so I decided to become a supporter.

Impressions of commerce media

At first, I was interested in not only e-commerce but also tools such as SaaS, but a recruitment agency introduced me to Commerce Media along with other e-commerce consulting companies, and I found that their approach of placing importance on operations was very similar to what I had done, so I felt I could use my skills and the business content resonated with me, so I applied.

During the interview, I spoke with the CEO, Mr. Izawa, and I felt that the atmosphere at my current company would suit me well, so I felt that this was the place for me, and when I received the offer I immediately accepted it.

I get the impression that many people at Commerce Media are mature and rational, and that they make a clear distinction between their work and private life. In particular, many of them have children, and many of them are able to balance their work and family life well. Recently, they have started flextime, and some people are able to go to pick up their children and then resume work.

Also, when I first joined the company, other members came to the office and we communicated face-to-face, but as I got used to it, remote work became the norm, so I felt that I had to get people involved and communicate with them. If you can raise an SOS, many people will listen sympathetically, so it's important to speak up without hesitation!

Another characteristic of Commerce Media is that they have a culture of equal relationships with clients and business partners, and they communicate what needs to be communicated to clients, and even with business partners for whom Commerce Media pays, they make every effort to make it easy to work together. I was impressed by that stance.

What I want to challenge in commerce media

I joined the company with experience in the operations department, but I also wanted to strengthen my skills in the marketing side, so I want to gain a deeper understanding of EC as a whole and be able to direct both operations and the front line. I told Izawa about this when I joined the company, so I am now in the consulting department, where I can gain a wide range of experience.

Currently, while I am supporting various clients, various knowledge within the company is accumulating among individual members, so I would like to consolidate that knowledge and create a system to train people who have no experience in e-commerce. I am also interested in building an organization, so I would like to take on that challenge at this company.

In addition, Commerce Media has many people who have struggled with e-commerce in the past, who respect their clients' businesses, and who are eager to improve their own skills, so I think people with similar circumstances and ways of thinking are a good fit.

On the other hand, it may not be a good fit for people who have little interest in EC or who cannot imagine people and things actually moving. However, there is an environment where people with no experience can thrive if they have a strong desire to challenge themselves in the EC industry, and there are actually members who are like that.

If you are interested in testing out your EC skills and want to continue improving them, we would love to hear from you! People from other regions are also welcome!