Neto launching in the US as e-commerce sales surge

Heather McIlvaine

4th Sep 2018

Australian retail management platform Neto is expanding into the US market and opening a Denver-based office, following record year-on-year revenue growth of 55 per cent in fiscal 2018.

The software provider is currently testing the market with 10 customers before ramping up its marketing activities in mid-November, Neto founder Ryan Murtagh said.

“Our approach is very much to make sure our product meets the needs of early adopter customers, and once our system meets their needs, it will reflect the needs of the greater audience,” he told Internet Retailing.

Founded in Brisbane nine years ago, Neto provides a complete e-commerce solution across POS, inventory and fulfilment for small-medium sized retailers. Today it counts more than 3000 retail merchants as customers, including Flora & Fauna, Edible Blooms, Bicycles Online, Driza-Bone and Gingerlily.

Several Neto customers have been trading in the US for over a year, and others have entered the market in the last few months. But Murtagh said it’s not just the stream of customers expanding overseas that spurred Neto to expand to the US. The fact that the total available market in the US is 30 times the size of Australia also made it an attractive move.

“The US is far more mature from an e-commerce standpoint, which makes it a good fit for us because our product is designed for retailers that are established and growing rather than startup enterprises,” he said.

The company said it will initially focus on acquiring marketplace sellers across its entire stable of industry verticals including tools and hardware, health and beauty, giftware and motor parts – to name a few.

However, customers are only part of the expansion equation for Neto, since the values of the retail management platform lies in its integrations with other players in the e-commerce space, such as marketplaces like Ebay and Amazon, order management tools like Myob and Xero, payment gateways like Stripe and Braintree, shipping providers like Australia Post and Sendle, and others.

Murtagh said that Neto already integrates with many of the key players in the US market and will focus on building out its ecosystem over the next six months.

“Were leveraging our established relationships early on and building new relationships over the next six months. The fact that Neto is channel-agnostic means the conversations so far have been much easier,” he said.

Unlike in Australia, Neto will not focus on its digital storefront solution, since there is already a lot of competition in that space, according to Murtagh. But he said there are few other barriers to entry.

“There’s very little in terms of product or even culture that we need to change,” he said.

Murtagh is currently working in the US to establish a small team in Denver, Colorado, where one of the company’s key partners is based. Murtagh declined to name the partner, but said that Neto will initially leverage some of its staff.

Going forward, the company will set up local sales, marketing and customer service teams, while back office operations and engineering will remain in Australia.

“We want to deliver the same service offering in the US that we offer here in Australia. That is people on the ground, accessible in local time-zones, who are experts in servicing our customers. Neto is much more than a software company. We’re the service that wraps around our software, and this truly sets us apart,” he said.

Updated on 04/09/2018 at 1530 AEST