We started Yumbles more than 4 years ago with the mission of enabling independent food makers like yourself to market their great products and sell them online, as well as increase awareness of their brand.
With this in mind we always believed and still do that our success should be closely tied to yours, hence we took the decision from the start to work on a commission-only fee model meaning that we only get paid when you do. Most will appreciate that this is a very difficult model to adopt as a young startup since there are many fixed costs that far outweigh the sales – we have, however, managed to still do this by fundraising and pushing hard to increase the sales for all of us without really revising our fees since day 1.
Four years on Yumbles is a different business in many ways but always looking to take things to the next level and bring the products we know and love to an even bigger audience. During our journey we have come to meet many of you and realise the challenges of trying to grow your businesses and online sales and as a result also now better appreciate what we need to do on our end to make this happen.
It is for this reason that we have recently explored, as part of a bigger plan, some changes to our pricing and after some feedback from some of you and factoring in what we believe we need to do to keep growing the marketplace, we have decided that it is necessary to introduce a modest fixed monthly fee (in addition to the current commission fee which will remain unchanged) which will enable us to invest even more to our mission.
There are many reasons we have decided on this approach (rather than an increase in the commission fee for example) and the short answer is that we do incur a number of fixed costs for every seller on Yumbles regardless of the level of their sales and we need to have a small monthly fee in order to continue operating a healthy business that drives meaningful sales for everyone.
We would like to continue providing a great service to you and be able to invest even more in activities that we feel are necessary to grow awareness of your products (such as our recently appointed digital PR agency) in addition to what we have been doing so far, events, the trade directory and so forth, and provide you with help but are not necessarily directly linked to immediate sales.
We appreciate that running a small business can be tough, especially at first, so with that in mind we have kept this fixed monthly fee to what we consider (and we hope you agree) a minimum.
In addition to this, we have decided to charge this monthly fee to your Yumbles account balance at the end of each month, meaning that you will not have to take money out of your pocket in order to pay for it. For those who haven’t yet build up enough sales to cover it, it will just mean that their account balance will go negative, something that also incentivises us even further to bring sales and at the same time also ensures that everyone on Yumbles is taking active steps in order to grow their sales rather than this being a one-sided effort on our part.
Monthly Fee
To make the monthly fee fairer we have also decided to have 5 different pricing tiers (based on sales).
Given that a many of you are operating seasonal businesses it makes sense that these tiers will be worked out at the end of each month based on the last 12 months of sales. This also means that anyone new starting on Yumbles will have the opportunity to build up their volume of sales before moving into one of the upper tiers.
This change will come into play from Q4 so it will appear on your monthly balance and invoices from the end of October forward.
FAQs
How can I work out my last 12 months of sales?
The Reports section in the Portal provides you with all the data you need to run analysis on your sales. You can download your sales data for periods of up to 3 months at a time, so for 12 months you will just need to download 4 times for the different date periods. The default is to download data based on dispatch date (because it assumes you want the data to reconcile your payments), but you can change that setting to order date.
What happens if I don’t have enough sales one month to cover the monthly fee?
Although this is unlikely as the fee is set on purpose to a very low amount, we do appreciate that there are is a small number of sellers that might find themselves in this situation particularly if you have made your products unavailable for sale for much of a month. In this case your account balance will simply go negative and we will collect any fees when you get sufficient sales.
I have been selling on Yumbles for less than 12 months - how will this work for me?
The fee will simply be based on the sales you have had since you started your account – in this way new sellers will be given the chance of building up enough sales on Yumbles before moving onto the higher tiers.
I am in the process of setting up my account – what will count as my first month?
We will be working closely with each new seller to mutually agree on a ‘go-live’ date. This is the date that will be used for the purposes of the fee calculation too.
What if I go live halfway through a month?
There will be no fee for any partial months, so essentially you will start being charged from the first full month after going live.
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