Useful resources for online grocery shopping for the busy Entrepeneur
One of most common hard skills an entrepreneur can accrue without much difficulty is cooking. This would greatly reduce basal cash outflow by cutting down on non-client meal costs (well it sucks if you have to entertain ALL the time like in b2b functions) and the greatest way to facilitate this is a simple trip to your local supermarket. But if you, like me, are using a SOHO, I encourage you to do your grocery shopping online. This has apparently kicked in China, where most tier-one city dwellers have resorted to ordering their groceries via the internet to enhance the quality of life through saving time and fighting cashier queues and parking costs. Seeing as how the denizens of Shanghai and Beijing have their love affair with 一号店 / Yi Hao Dian (rather suave move by Walmart to acquire them recently by the way) – I surmised emulating this behavior would set me and my dear readers ahead of the curve. The latter company has seen immense growth, specifically 19,218% over the last 3 years alone. I recommend you take the time to read the interview with founder Gang Yu at Deloitte.
Incidentally, I recently had the privilege to sit through Toby desforges’ talk at a Regus Connect event held in Wisma Regus (yes I’m plugging them because I’m a member as well as a fan of their rather empowering service, but more on this another time) and he spoke about the rising adoption on e-tailing (electronic/online retailing) particularly from e-grocers – I recommend following his linkedin profile I provided and networking with him; he’s a veritable authority on the retail industry and gave very good insights into how Retail is still the biggest business on earth – validating my involvement with web based POS ‘s3pos’ (Simple Solutions Global: Please support me by liking the page and signing up to the mailing list so I can invite you to the SE Asia launch as soon as the product is finally translated in full)
If you are really into considering an e-grocer business, this PDF is an academic piece on the strategies and challenges of Internet Grocery retailing Logistics (not light reading, but if you are on my blog – you should not be thwarted with a short attention span or a lack of vocabulary anyway)
Finally, I’m done with my ramble, so here’s some great online resources (I’m not associated to any of them, these are only my personal recommendations.)
Adventures of a prolific Entrepreneur 