I watch a lot of Home Improvement shows, HGTV has been an inspiration and I’ve started and even finished Home Improvement work over the years. As I look at the consolidation of Vendio and Andale into one website, one offering, I can’t help but compare a consolidation of these 2 sites to a major house remodel. Well, except we have duplex that we need to make one house - built with totally different plumbing, electric, designs, materials and nothing fits together easily. About the only thing we share is that we both have rooms with some of same purposes. Oh! And we’re living in the “house” as we remodel.

But, like a large remodeling project, after the blood, sweat and tears are over, and the project is done. The benefits are huge and impressive. Which is the end goal of this long process.

To start with, there was an offsite (which is corporate speak for a big honking meeting J..). (This is where all the departments come together and present, debate and make decision). The home improvement equivalent is the time that you would spend with the architect and contractor. You know what the vision is, but need these folks to make it happen.

Once of the first things that we need to do is to bring these 2 houses together under one roof, so we can begin connecting the systems. So aside from a few cosmetics, such as seeing the Vendio logo on the Andale site, the March release is the first user change you’ll see in this long and complex process.

At the offsite, it was determined that the Vendio navigation was the best choice. One of the key elements was that there is no “searching”. All navigation is in one place. The Andale navigation had navigation on the top as well as on the side, so this simple change will make navigation simpler and there won’t be any guessing as to where you should be going to get where you want to go.

With this change, we can begin the next process of cross offerings that will allow Vendio folks to access Andale tools and visa versa. This will entail a bit more than the initial effort, but we expect it to happen in May – Early June as this involves moving to a common billing system, and a common customer service system, (etc).

All in all, we’re all looking forward to the various projects, and hope you’ll tune into the blog now and again to take a peek at what’s next and what we are working on.

Thanks for you time !!

Crystal Wells-Miller
“Insert Title”
PS. Mike said ”it’s a blog, have fun with your title”. So I did what I always do when stuck, stumped or stupid, searched the Internet. I couldn’t find anything self-deprecating, yet humorous (standard requirements). This seems to require more searching (or a bribe to the search gurus).

Welcome to the Vendio Blog. I’ve wanted to let our customers and partners know more about the activities at Vendio for some time, but the team has been so busy lately we haven’t had time to write. I decided to start our blog to give a little less formal insight into the challenges and opportunities at Vendio than we provide in announcements and press releases, etc… Expect slightly worse spelling and grammar and an occasional misstatement of the future (or perhaps an occasional over-share of information). If you are a competitor, please stop reading now….

I expect we’ll generally have short posts in the future, but this first one will be a doozy… I decided to start writing now to share more about the future of Vendio and Andale after these two pioneers joined forces in November of last year.

December Offsite
Vendio had an intensive offsite in December to plot the future of the newly combined business. The company covers even more of the globe now, with employees on three continents working literally around the clock to provide our services used by sellers and buyers in nearly every country. This offsite provided two amazing outputs—a roadmap for the future and the recognition that these are two incredible teams coming together. Indeed, Vendio today has more cumulative experience with ecommerce in general and eBay in particular than any outside those with household names as publicly traded companies.

I can’t share every detail of our plans publicly, but I can share some general guideposts and give customers a look into what they should expect going forward. Here are some FAQs….

What do we call you now? Vendale? Andio?
First, let’s answer a popular question. The sales management business going forward will unify under the Vendio brand. While we will line up farther back in the school line for lunch with a name starting with V, we believe the Vendio brand has a strong association with consistent and reliable value-priced offerings. It’s also rarely mispronounced (btw, Andale isn’t Ann-DaleJ). Sellers using both Vendio and Andale today will see unification of services under the Vendio brand going forward.

Will I see changes to my current services?

Over time, absolutely;)! We get constant requests for new features, and we generate a ton of great ideas internally as well. Most will all eventually make it into the offering. You shouldn’t see much disruption to core selling services, however, particularly in the near term as the team works on the “guts” required to combine the systems.

We will be combining the best of both services into a common platform that will be extended by the combined team going forward. Only through this combination can we get maximum efficiencies that provide ALL sellers the best services possible.

As the team reviewed both the Andale and Vendio services, we recognized that each had different strengths…in some cases the strengths were related to features. In other cases, they were the intuitive nature of the user interface and how the services were used. The Andale service, for example, had some highly requested features the Vendio team hadn’t yet offered. In other cases, Vendio had features Andale had not yet offered. The Vendio platform will grow to get the combined feature set. Everyone will get more in the future through this combination than they have today.

So what features can I expect?
If you are a Vendio seller, you can expect the following:

• Support for multiple eBay IDs using the same inventory and Vendio account

• Support for Authorize.net and other payment methods in checkout

• Support for launching items to the UK and German eBay sites

• Support for more profile types in addition to launch profiles for faster item creation and editing

• A single item editor to supplement the bulk editor for SMIE

• An enhanced desktop selling solution (based on the current Andale Lister Pro foundation), that includes post-sale management and a variety of enhanced features. Sales Manager Pro WILL continue to be supported, but many will want the enhanced feature set available in Andale Lister Pro. Transition assistance will be provided as well here.

• Access to robust marketplace research services (currently Andale Research)

If you are an Andale seller, you can expect the following:

• Enhanced listing automation currently available in Vendio SMIE
• Enhanced inventory management and editing including
• A bulk editor that enables you to create or edit up to 50 items at a time
• Multi-tier folders
• Bulk find and replace for multiple fields
• A more intuitive interface for item creation, profiles, and editing
• Bulk Second Chance Offer handling
• Vendio Reviser to revise active items automatically or in bulk
• Vendio Buyer Appreciation, a FREE service to increase bid activity and sales
• Additional item visibility by being featured in Dealio search (currently offered only to Vendio supported sellers

All sellers can expect:

• Enhanced stores customization, including stores hosted on your own domain
• Support for additional marketplaces and other buyer traffic sources
• Support for additional payment providers in checkout
• Deeper integration with shipping providers
• Additional services that help you reduce costs and increase sales to benefit seller profitability

How long will this service consolidation take?
While we definitely want to complete the consolidation as quickly as possible to get on to new development, our considerations for your business have taken priority. Therefore, we expect to roll the efforts out over the course of the next full year, keeping in mind we won’t make any changes in the heavy selling periods. For the most part, changes will also generally come in the way of additional service features for all. For example, Andale sellers will get a bulk editor and Vendio SMIE sellers will get a single item listing form in addition to the bulk interface they now have. We currently expect to be fully consolidated in the middle of next year. Andale sellers get enhanced listing automation, while Vendio sellers get support for international marketplaces. The combination of strengths builds an unrivaled selling platform.

Where are we going?
Our mission has been and will continue to enable merchants to reach consumers, manage transactions, and profitably grow their businesses. In many cases, the services required are obvious to all and simply need to be completed and released to the site. In other cases, we may experiment with alternate ideas that may be less obvious to our current customers—our Widgipedia site is one such example. In every case, however, we feel there is a clear path to assisting your businesses even if it isn’t readily apparent (sometimes that positive surprise is even better).

I’ve been fortunate enough to hear from a lot of current sellers about what we are doing right. It seems clear we need to continue focusing also on our core service values—affordable services that are easy to use. We keep these values in mind always as we bring the services together for the good of all sellers. I hope you subscribe to our RSS feed or bookmark our blog to follow along with our progress. There are clearly exciting times ahead for Vendio and all of our customers and partners. We’re glad you are all along for the ride!

–Mike Effle, EVP, Sales Management

Welcome to Vendio’s customer/corporate communication blog. The purpose of this blog is to keep you informed of our consolidation efforts between Vendio and Andale. We welcome your comments and look forward to hearing your ideas.

So please, take a moment and register, and tell us what you think.