Get inspired by a beautiful success story on unosoft. Sorin Moldovan, CEO & Founder of Aqualine tells you about his journey in business, but also how he achieves hundreds of orders with his online store.
The important thing to know is that the business grew gradually, with a lot of hard work, that he didn’t have it all planned from the beginning, but that the confidence in his idea made him keep going.
1. About Aqualine
As an entrepreneur, Sorin started in 2008 in the water treatment business and went through all the phases until he ended up trading online. Eventually, he ended up with the unosoft platform.
Aqualine sells water treatment and purification solutions. It can bring any water to drinking water status.
Aqualine’s target customer segment is domestic and semi-industrial customers.
2. How Aqualine evolved
Since we last spoke to Sorin in 2020, Aqualine’s first year of the pandemic has been very good in terms of sales. They took advantage of this, they strengthened their position so that the growth trend continued.
Aqualine has been selling with the unosoft platform since 2018. In order for a business to grow, Sorin believes that you have to grow everything – that includes the team, as well as the Aqualine warehouse which has grown 4-5x oversize, compared to 2020.
Sorin has changed the warehouse, the stock has increased, so has the product range. They are now working with several suppliers that they have tested before. Automatically Sorin and the sales team have grown with the business.
The vast majority of orders come through the online store. The products Aqualine sells are more technical, and they emphasize phone conversations as a means of communicating with customers. Of the percentage of customers who seek advice for product details, Sorin tells us he has a very good conversion rate – and that means he knows his products well.
For those orders he also does up-selling. Consultative selling works very well.
3. How the business has evolved in terms of figures and number of orders
In the year 2022 the turnover reached 1 million euro. Since Sorin moved his business to the unosoft platform, they have grown more and more.
Sorin is helped a lot by the billing software together with his colleagues at SmartBill, the payment processor integrator, plus many more.
The unosoft platform saves him a lot of time: he can upload the user manual on the product page and the customer can download it anytime. Sorin also uses loyalty points to reward customers, having a high percentage of repeat customers and interest from existing customers. Especially since the vast majority of the products sold on the site have consumables.
Aqualine is a team of 6 people and they plan to expand it in the near future. Sorin wants to focus less on the operational side and more on business development.
He has outsourced the marketing part and only deals with the business part. Elvis Floroiu from Zotis Media is in charge of the marketing side and Sorin is happy with this partnership. Sorin tells us that Elvis has contributed to the growth of the business this year.
Sorin believes that you have to know your products very well in order to sell.
Once you have made sure that there is a market for your products and that there is a demand for them, you will surely find out who to sell your products to, when and how. It is important to be as involved as possible and to be honest.
4. Business challenges
With business and problems grow. Challenges arise with more stock or more orders. You have to keep an eye on stock turnover, always make sure you have the stock you need and don’t tie up money in products that have a lower turnover.
Challenges exist when you increase your product range and in situations where your warehouse colleague is messing up products.
Aqualine can boast that customers who have purchased from them return.
5. Aqualine development plans
Aqualine wants to further cement its position, take advantage of growth opportunities, continue the upward trend they have had so far and continue upgrading and updating to the ever-changing market. They intend to increase the percentage of promotion and communication campaigns.
Recommendations for entrepreneurs
Take the first step before it’s too late! There are a lot of big players in the market who have become even bigger by going online and then consolidating their position offline. Sorin regrets not starting the online business earlier.
It is recommended to have products with complete and accurate descriptions, quality photos and a well thought-out marketing strategy.
If he were to start over, Sorin would make his online store his first, not wait 8 years for it.
7. How the relationship with the unosoft team is evolving
The relationship with the unosoft team works very well for Sorin – so well that he hardly knows any of his unosoft colleagues, says Sorin.
That means he hasn’t encountered any situations for a long time.
Sorin confidently recommends the unosoft platform to anyone who wants to go down this road of online sales. He is satisfied that the unosoft platform works very well, that there are always new features that help him and he even implements them.
3 reasons why Sorin recommends the unosoft platform
- It is a platform that was designed and built to sell
- It has a lot of features included
- Relatively low price to use, compared to other platforms on the market
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PS. If Sorin’s story convinced you, it’s time to follow his recommendations and ensure maximum chances of success for your business idea. Sell with unosoft! You get 15 days free demo and friendly monthly subscriptions starting at 7 euro per month.
