As e-commerce and entrepreneurship are combining to form small-scale and medium-scale startups, there is a growing interest in the ecosystem required for such enterprises to survive.
There is an industry steadily and deliberately growing around the idea of supporting and providing services to enable such businesses to thrive. One of the innovative and supportive roles provided for online shops, particularly those springing up on Facebook, is Kick Storo.
Kick Storo
Kick Storo is a service that assists businesses in building up a shop operated through a Facebook page. To be more precise, it “helps brands and young entrepreneurs to create their complete stores within Facebook and accept PayPal payments from fans on social media. Your fans can now buy your products/services either by surfing through Facebook Page photos or through your page update in their news feed.”
Kick Storo precludes the need for creating a separate website, since business owners can now sell their products straight from their Facebook pages.
The service is provided free of cost for now, and is something that new and emerging startups in particular should be signing up for. Kick Storo offers the option of creating a Facebook shop, and various promotion services for these shops. There are some extra services that can be purchased as well, for more advanced users.
How It Works
The service once availed will guide its users through a comprehensive process detailing the best way to sell on Facebook. On their website, they outline steps to explain how this process gets underway.
The first step is making the Facebook page, which will be an online shop. It is through this page that interested customers will be able to purchase said products and services.
After making this page comes the second step, which involves advertising. Advertising is all about promoting the Facebook page and the products available on it. There are three other steps included in this process: first deciding which products would be best to highlight for promotion, then looking at the target market that might be interested in purchasing these products, and last deciding on how long to market these promotions and how much to spend on this.
Advertising and promotion are ongoing activities that will continually enhance the popularity and sales of the business, and this was something that the founders of Kick Storo realised was an important part of running a business through Facebook.
The People Behind Kick Storo
Kick Storo was co-founded by Azm Dar (@azmdar) and Mujtaba Shuja (@mujtabashuja), and was launched under its current moniker in 2013. The co-founders started work on this idea before that though, and interestingly revealed in an interview that they are not techies but rather had knowledge of business marketing. Azm Dar stated: “We just started with a belief that things would work out fine and we had no fear of failure. I thought I knew the customer’s pain & behaviour well enough and can execute the idea well.”
In an attempt to gain some traction for their business idea, they became one of Plan9’s first success stories. Plan9 incubated them and during this time they received feedback, guidance and mentoring, and a workspace within which to grow their idea into a potential business.
After completing their program with Plan9, they went on to participate in Accelerace in Denmark, which ultimately led them to receive the funding and platform on which they could launch their business, the head office of which is based in Denmark. They have another office based in Pakistan.
Originally having the name Rocxial, the co-founders explained: “Over the course of a year, we changed the name of our app THRICE. The second name we came up with was Rocxial, which we then used for our Social Media Agency that I and Mujtaba started alongside Kick Storo so that we can earn some money to sustain operations.”
Advice For Startups
The co-founders benefitted from taking part in incubation programs, which led to the growth of their business idea.
In an interview for the Plan9 blog, Azm Dar offered his advice to anyone starting out and interested in taking part in an incubation program: “There is no formula for success, it differs in each case and you have to figure it out for yourself. The best advice you can get would be ‘how not to waste resources and how to test assumptions’, do take that and try to buy as much time as possible. Don’t be afraid to pivot and hire individuals with good IQ (between 100 to 120). Please don’t waste time preparing for investor pitches, nobody will give you money until you have good amount of customers already. Try to work out an alternate revenue source; since being in Pakistan, we have to do things differently to survive and prosper.”
Connect with Kick Storo
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