Deal to Watch: A SaaS Startup Bringing the Post Office to 42 million Internet Entrepreneurs

Key Stats:

Summary

As of November 27, 2018, Orange Marmalade had raised $1,783

Orange Marmelade has been selected as a “Deal To Watch” by KingsCrowd. This distinction is reserved for deals selected into the top 10-20% of our deal diligence funnel. If you have questions regarding our deal diligence and selection methodology please reach out to hello@kingscrowd.com.

Problem

The e-c ommerce business is huge and growing, with more than 42 million Americans selling items online. Further, there are more than 20 million e-sellers on e-Bay, about 2 million on Amazon, and about 350,000 on Shopify.

All these people have a similar problem: shipping what they sell in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

The basic need of the millions of these internet entrepreneurs is a fast and efficient shipping management system. The e-sellers need to ensure that they find a way to ship their products to the customers worldwide but, to date, the only way to do this and make sure it’s done right is “doing it themselves.”

The problem lies in the lack of an efficient, dependable and technology-oriented shipping system for the e-sellers. Simply put – they have to use the same postal service and shipping options the rest of us do. The absence of such an option leads to problems related to customer service, warehousing, inventory management, etc…

A similar problem exists for the small office/home office (SOHO) market. This market consists of restaurants, lawyers, consultants, and grocers, to name a few. Such businesses also require an efficient service to send their mailers and provide postage.

Summary

At Orange Marmalade, advanced technology is used to fill the need of the e-sellers, instead of creating a new need. The goal is to make life easier for millions of e-commerce sellers and SOHO companies. For the sellers looking to sell their products online, or for the SOHO companies looking to send out mailings, Orange Marmalade has their backs.

The products of Orange Marmalade are SaaS-based, and they use MIVA scripting and PHP/MYSQL. The technology is developed by the e-sellers, for the e-sellers.

        Source: Orange Marmalde via StartEngine.

The two significant products of Orange Marmalade are: 

• Orange Manager: Orange Manager helps make shipping simpler for the e-sellers. The technology helps the e-sellers to print postage, manage orders, and manage their customers. It is a shipping system, along with the provisions for order and business management.
• Irrespective of their location, the e-sellers can integrate with the multi-channel shipping software, print labels, manage orders, provide customer service, track orders, and manage their entire e-commerce business online and all in one place. The payment plan is simple and grows as the business grows.
• Orange Mailer: Orange Mailer serves the purpose of simplifying mailing. It is meant to be used by SOHO companies to save time and money. It helps them skip the line to the post office, and enables them to pay for postage and print shipping labels online.
• Orange Mailer even supplies USPS shipping labels at discounted prices. The entire process makes it easier, simpler, and less expensive for the SOHO companies to create labels, manage addresses, and send out mailers.

The Opportunity

As we mentioned earlier, the potential market is vast. It has 42 million e-sellers, and 20 million e-stores all in need of a seamless solution to the shipping and customer management needs.

The company has also taken it upon themselves to truly help their customers. Orange Manager serves as the solution-provider, not just for Amazon, but other sellers as well. About 51% of the Amazon sellers alone generate enough revenue to be able to afford Orange Manager’s top tier subscription. That’s roughly 125,000 potential customers.

Similarly, for Orange Mailer as well, the market of small office/home office companies is large. There are about 1.5 million PC Postage users in the US, and the SOHO PC Postage marketplace is growing at above 11% year over year. 

The market is there, and it is growing significantly.

Few viable solutions have come to market to date.

Why We Like it

Unique Product

Most importantly, the product and technology of Orange Marmalade set it apart. They make it easier, simpler, and more cost-efficient for the e-sellers and home businesses to ship their products. They have simplified the process of shipping and mailing. The products are SaaS-based and can be used from anywhere, with a simple interface.

Early Successes

Orange Marmalade has a patent-pending design which is already generating revenues on all platforms. The company has a revenue-sharing agreement in place with goShippo and a partnership agreement with Easy Post. The pricing is competitive and it is designed to grow with the company.

It’s also worth noting, that the executive team has “bootstrapped” (paid for all development expenses themselves) so far. We like to see management with “skin in the game.”

The Team

Another distinguishing strength of Orange Marmalade is its team. The team had a previous startup that was ranked as the 427th fastest growing company in the US in 2012. The company was co-founded by William Gilligan and Mike Ferneman.

William is a full-fledged e-commerce developer, while Mike has played lead roles in promoting and designing web user experiences. Thus, a technical co-founder and a marketing co-founder, with about 35 years of e-commerce experience, make the perfect sauce for success.

Rating

KingsCrowd is assigning the Deal to Watch rating to Orange Marmalade for the unique products it offers, and for the simplification it provides.

The products of Orange Marmalade cater to a high-demand market. They have been developed by the e-sellers for the e-sellers, and make the process of shipping and mailing quite simple, easy, and cost-efficient. The startup has the keys to long-term success, including experience, knowledge, and wisdom.

As rightly said by Jason Searfoss, Orange Marmalade “is like the Ben & Jerry of E-Commerce.” It makes the use of technology easier and simpler for the e-sellers and home businesses. They make the technology taste better.

Orange Marmalade is a KingsCrowd Deal to Watch. To date, the raise has been slow on StartEngine though in our discussion with the team we think that dollars raised in this round are by no means their only avenues for raising capital and growing the company. Thus even if they only hit their minimum, we think the team will be able to secure the necessary capital to grow.

In the event that the round does not hit its minimum, capital will be returned to investors.

Other risks to consider are the fact that it will be challenging to sell to small businesses and unsophisticated online sellers. Without a real sense of what customer acquisition cost could look like we cannot judge the viability of the business model. For these reasons, there is an elevated level of risk to investing.

Regardless, the upside is absolutely there if this experienced management team can execute and go to market effectively. At the $3M valuation entry point, we think this is a Deal To Watch.