Online Seller Archetypes II — The Journey of the Digital Entrepreneur
In the first part of this two-part article, we looked at the hidden entrepreneur. In most cases, e-commerce is not the primary concern of the hidden entrepreneur but instead serves to support the people and things that really matter to them (e.g. their family and studies). Many of them had their first experience of entrepreneurship through online retailing, which suggests that these sellers may have never ventured into any form of entrepreneurship if it wasn’t for e-commerce. By offering a low-cost, highly flexible and easily scalable environment for entrepreneurship, e-commerce has enabled a new generation of unlikely entrepreneurs.
In this article, we’ll be looking at sellers who are further along in both their entrepreneurial and digital transformation journey. These three seller archetypes are entrepreneurs at their core and heavily rely on their businesses for their livelihoods. However, they are each at varying stages of digital transformation and highlights the ability for seller archetypes to transition from one to another.
The Never-too-late
Never-too-late entrepreneurs are sellers who have been selling offline for more than 10 years, before choosing to digitalise and sell online. These sellers largely adopt e-commerce in response to external pressures to remain competitive and relevant, while also reaching new customers and expanding their businesses. While they are veteran entrepreneurs, they are the least mature in their digitalisation journey among the three entrepreneurs.
However, it’s important to acknowledge that these sellers have taken the important step of going online. Their relatively low levels of digitalisation, with only 28% of their sales originating from online sources, indicates room to help these sellers further digitally transform. This is especially true during the pandemic where these sellers can further capture the benefits from increased demand for online shopping.
While these never-too-late entrepreneurs are the least likely to require help on funding, given that they already have some form of collateral and credit history, they tend to need support on generating new distribution channels. Furthermore, while experienced in traditional commerce, these entrepreneurs may need further upskilling support to fully utilise the digital tools they now have access to.
The Moonlighter
Moonlighters are online sellers who also have full-time jobs. While they have full-time responsibilities, make no mistake that e-commerce is among their highest priorities as they rely on it as their primary source of income. The health of their e-commerce business also impacts their families as over two-thirds of moonlighters are also the breadwinner of their households.
Moonlighters greatly benefit from the convenience and low-cost nature of e-commerce allowing them to experiment with new business ideas without huge capital outlays. Additionally, given that they have an additional source of income they typically have better access to capital and are hence relatively less sensitive to changes in monetary costs. Having to balance two full-time responsibilities, it is unsurprising that they also greatly benefit from e-commerce’s flexibility of working hours.
For these entrepreneurs, reducing red tape and improving the ease of doing business is crucial. They also need the most support in business knowledge given that they lack experience in starting and scaling a business.
The Highly-digital
Highly-digital entrepreneurs are the most advanced in their digital transformation journey among these three archetypes, with over half of their total sales coming from online channels. Typically in their early thirties and the breadwinners of their households, they are what people conventionally think of when we talk about online sellers. These sellers own and operate their online businesses and rely on them for the livelihoods of themselves and their families. Therefore, they primarily invest their e-commerce earnings into their families and into expanding their businesses.
What makes the highly-digital entrepreneur especially interesting is that it points to the dynamic nature of the digital entrepreneurial journey. These archetypes aren’t simply static end-points but instead stages that sellers can progress through. E-commerce can not only act as an introduction to entrepreneurship, but also as an alternative source of income while balancing other responsibilities, and to help scale ideas to become one’s main livelihood.
