Neto is one of the few Australian e-commerce players that stands up to the giants like Shopify and BigCommerce.
As a local provider it can offer retailers features that other providers cannot – Neto has an exclusive partnership with Australia Post around fulfilment and logistics that mean that small businesses can automate a lot of overseas selling, for example.
The alliance offers Australia Post customers a scalable, all-in-one solution to integrate sales channels, orders, payments, customer information and accounting with Australia Post delivery services.
Importantly, for Australia Post customers, Neto simplifies the freight-sending process by enabling them to pick, pack then print their Australia Postshipping labels with a click of the mouse.
What is the story behind Neto?
Neto was founded in 2011 by Ryan Murtagh and Simon Yuen.
Ryan is an entrepreneur at heart, his business journey started when he took over a failing school tuck shop and turned it into a small business success story at the age of 14.
Although his business interests have been varied, he has always had a passion for online retail. Ryan’s first online store was available through his school’s intranet, it sold the fly-fishing flies he tied while at boarding school in South Africa.
After completing a business degree at the Queensland University of Technology, Ryan continued on his entrepreneurial journey, building an online department store that imported and distributed a range of goods from China. It was at this time that Ryan hired Simon, a talented programmer who also studied at QUT.
Simon was brought on board to assist in the maintenance and development of the online store that Ryan was operating. At the time, Ryan was struggling to scale the business efficiently with the software available to him.
Using the experience Ryan had gained as an online retailer, and the development skills of Simon, the two set out on the path of developing an end-to-end e-commerce platform designed to automate and streamline online trading for SMEs. They focused on the pain points they were experiencing as a growing start up and set about solving these through software.
Soon, they realised that they could share the solution with others, helping them to grow online. Today, thousands of businesses use the Neto platform to run their online stores and cumulatively they have turned over more than $1 billion through the service.
Along came Telstra
Telstra acquired a 51 per cent stake in the company in June 2015, and though it will be kept as a separate brand, Neto is Telstra’s e-Commerce play. To date, this partnership has enabled Neto to accelerate its development plans and has provided Neto with the resources it needed to build out a robust customer success team.
As we move into 2016 and as part of Telstra, Neto’s gearing up for a very big year indeed. “One of the most exciting developments for 2016, will be in how we build out a solution that helps retailers unify their commerce platform across both physical and online stores,” the team told Anthill.
“Already this year we have announced a partnership with Australia Post that allows for seamless logistics and fulfillment for retailers. We will have more announcements along a similar theme to make in the months ahead; online retail in Australia in 2016 is going to be a dynamic space indeed, and our goal is to streamline and simplify the platforms that retailers are on.”
