Marc Schillaci - Oxatis Founder and CEO

Google, SFR and Oxatis - Working Hard to Get French Businesses Online

I'm extremely excited to announce the launch of a very important project that we've been working on for months now:

This morning, Oxatis, Google and SFR are launching a joint initiative: Mon Entreprise En Ligne, the French equivalent of Getting British Businesses Online, which allows any and all small businesses in France to create their website free of charge.

Internet is a proven way to boost the growth of small businesses across the globe. However, only 3 out of every 10 small to medium sized businesses in France have a website to present their company and services.

This initiative to get these small businesses online and help them understand all of the opportunities that Internet has to offer was developed in partnership with Google and SFR, emblematic Internet companies in France, and is supported by the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry.

• Oxatis has put forth its expertise to develop the technical platform and site-building tools and hosts all of the websites created through this initiative,
• SFR provides assistance with the use of web technologies via its SFR Pro 1001 service,
• Google proposes its online tools for generating traffic and optimizing visibility (AdWords, Analytics...) and offers 100 Euros to all users registered on meel.fr for their first AdWords ad campaign.

Mon Entreprise En Ligne is an exceptionally open and flexible initiative:

• No subscription required, no long-term obligations
• All information contained in the site belongs entirely to its creator
• Free services for 1 year: system and tools, domain name and hosting are free of charge the first year. They are then provided at 5 Euros Excl. VAT per month.

The Mon Entreprise En Ligne team will be taking to the road on a bus tour of France throughout the month of May to spread the word and get those small businesses online!

Training and seminars, in partnership with local Chambers of Commerce and Industry, will be provided for small businesses, as well as personal (and free!) help and support with creating their website. 

The Mon Entreprise en Ligne bus tour will be visiting the following cities:

• Rouen, 09 May 2011 
• Lille, 11 May
• Strasbourg, 12 May
• Lyon, 16 and 17 May
• Marseille, 18 May
• Nice, 19 May
• Montpellier, 23 May
• Toulouse, 24 May
• Bordeaux, 25 May
• Nantes, 26 May
• Rennes, 27 May

Franck Cadoret, General Director of SFR, Jean Marc Tassetto, General Director of Google France, and I, hope that a multitude of French SMEs will come out and take advantage of this special opportunity!

For those of you French-speakers out there, feel free to visit the site meel.fr for more details about the project.

Sell on eBay with Oxatis MarketPlace Manager

Bad news:

If you had other plans this week, you may fall a bit behind as there's some work to be done for your Oxatis store! 

The good news: You're going to sell on eBay!

I won't waste your time going on and on about eBay, its 233 million members across the globe and its 14 million active shoppers in the UK alone.  

We're all familiar with this marketplace made up of individuals and small businesses where millions of transactions are processed every day.

eBay is the virtual equivalent of a local market where merchants sell products from their high street store to expand their clientele and develop a new sales channel. It's an excellent opportunity to increase product visibility from the comfort of your own home or office.

For your Oxatis store, it's as good as done! This month we launched MarketPlace Manager - eBay.

Activate the MarketPlace Manger, list your products and sell them on eBay and fully manage the sales cycle directly from your Oxatis admin console.

Inventory in synchronized between the two platforms and eBay orders are automatically retrieved in your Oxatis back office.

What else do you need to know? The sooner you get crackin' the sooner you can start selling on eBay, the world's online marketplace!

Note: Don't make too many plans for the upcoming months...other marketplaces are sure to follow!

  

Easy E-Commerce: Oxatis Shop Pages Now Built with Drag and Drop

Since last week, new Drag and Drop page layout technology has been available for Oxatis e-stores, saving shop owners precious time when configuring their catalog layout.

All you have to do is "grab" elements and drag them to the zone you want them to be displayed in.

For more details, check out our help center.

This interface includes several new features allowing the store manager to: 

1. Make changes and preview in real time
2. Add desired elements by dragging and dropping
3. Horizontally and vertically align elements independently
4. Configure additional display settings
5. Create complex and attractive page layouts

And we didn't forget about you graphic artists and integrators working on the platform. We added numerous CSS classes to allow you to go even further when customizing the catalog.

We hope these new features find you well and make it even easier and faster for you to set up your catalog pages and customize your shop.

Oxatis wishes you a happy new year!

Life (is Beautiful) at Oxatis

As the year comes to a close, practically the entire Oxatis team got together at the beginning of the week to mix a bit of business with a bunch of pleasure.

It was a chance to assess our performance over the year, to talk about some recent achievements and to announce some things to come, between us of course for the time being ;) But you'll be the first (or second) to know what's coming.  

It's rare that I talk about our corporate get-togethers, which often finish around a good meal of local fare, even though we make a point to organize a few a year. 

But this one was quite memorable! 43 members of the team - those who couldn't make it were missed - came together for a chocolate themed evening filled with plenty of music (certain voices will be engraved in my memory forever!) and holiday spirit.

Watching these 43 people have fun, laugh and spend some quality time together outside of the office, I couldn't help but think about those who'll be joining us. 

It's always frustrating and a bit unfortunate not to address this side of the corporate culture when we recruit applicants. So if you're coming in to Oxatis for a job interview in the near future, beef up your resume and take a quick look at these photos. At Oxatis, we're always looking for people who know how to work well and play well together!

A big thanks to the entire team for a great evening!

 

Congratulations to the E-Commerce Academy Winners - October 2010 Session

For the October 2010 session of the Oxatis E-Commerce Academy, we announced the winners following a conference at the Salon des micro-entreprises in Paris. This trade show closely resembles the Business Startup show that we'll be attending in London at the end of the month.

This time around, the jury was made up of:

• Christine Lorimy – Coliposte
• Henri Kaufman – Hipipip
• Grégoire Leclercq – EBP
• Blaise Vignon – Microsoft
• Antoine Dary – Audacia
• Denis Fages – Chacunsoncafe
• And Hervé Bourdon, Nathalie Perchard and Philippe Leroy from Oxatis.

And the winners are:

Master Category:
- Géraldine Pichard from Épilation Expert
Géraldine told us that she was recruited by ODC Distribution, another Oxatis customer, for an internship. She didn't know anything about websites, but built hers on her own.

Women Category:
- Julianne Fischer from Obelligne

E-Commerce Partner Category:
- Pierre SAYEGH from France Electric

Newbie Category:
- Marion Olivieri from Figurines Avenue

General Category:
- Jérôme Leveille from Espace Ombrage
Jérôme told us about how he discovered Oxatis at the Salon des micro-entreprises exactly two years ago!

Congratulations to all of you!

See you at the next session ...

In-House Development

Short note to share a bit of in-house news with you:

I'm pleased to announce the addition of Philippe Leroy, acting General Manager, to the Oxatis team.

Teasing:
No, it's not this Philippe Leroy.
Not this Philippe Leroy either.

Our Philippe Leroy comes from the software publishing world.

After several years at Xerox and about a dozen at Microsoft, Philippe spent 10 years developing and implementing direct and channel sales strategies for a group of 300 people in 3 different European countries. His strategies resulted in increased sales of ten to thirty million Euros.

Oxatis has the same aspirations in the same markets … so, he's stepping in to head up general management.

Welcome Philippe! Big, beautiful challenges await.

The entire Oxatis team is ready to take them on with you!

E-Commerce Academy Winners

Sorry for the wait...but as they say, better late than never!

This time around, the E-Commerce Academy awards were given out on July 2nd during our Journées Oxygène in Marseille, France.

This event brings together Oxatis clients, partners, solution centers and other e-commerce actors once a year under one roof to nurture their e-commerce activities and provide expert information to those seeking it out, all in a relaxed and fun atmosphere where everyone really has the chance to interact and exchange their points of view.

While this event is currently focused on our French market, we are slowly expanding it to include all of the different countries where we are currently present. And this year, we had our first ever Oxatis E-Commerce Partner from the UK in attendance!

So, if any of you are interested in attending next year or in entering your Oxatis site in the E-Commerce Academy, don't be shy...feel free to contact us or leave a comment below.

And without further ado, the 2010 E-Commerce Academy winners are:

• Master
  Jacques Bottemanne for bières du monde

• General
  Olivier Kaufman for terrasse- nature 

• ECP
  Nicolas Tant for Decklinea

• Newbie
  Nicolas de Watteville for e-claireur
  

• Women
  Tamara Tarassova for Altavic-bio

Congratulations to the winners! And thanks to everyone who participated.

 

Oxatis E-Commerce Academy Nominees - Jury Deliberation 24 June 2010

Once again, we had a heated meeting this year to choose the list of nominees for the E-Commerce Academy.

Here's a sneak peak at the nominees that came out of the jury deliberation last week.
An unexpected surprise: Two Italian applicants were nominated this time around.

See you this Friday night, 2 July, for the awards ceremony that will be held in Marseille during the Oxatis event - Journées Oxygène.

Good luck to all the nominees! 

• Master
  Pascal Gesan for alterafrica
  Marc Hauglustaine for aux meilleurs prix 
  Jacques Bottemanne for bières du monde

• General
  Alain Bierry for abp-piscines
  Ydriss Dessay for Cadodes 
  Olivier Kaufman for terrasse- nature 

• ECP
  Christophe Meurant for AchaTendance
  Olivier Baudewyn for Journaux originaux
  Nicolas Tant for Decklinea

• Newbie
  Nicolas de Watteville for e-claireur
  Arnaud Pfliger for climadreamshop
  Francesca Mistrangelo for ClickNails

• Women
  Tamara Tarassova for Altavic-bio
  Sylvia Grandperrin for Les Joyaux De La Couronne
  Angela Carpinelli for Mammabimbo

With professional participation from our jury members:

• Bertrand PINEAU
  FEVAD
• Martine FUXA
  E-Commerce Mag 
• Olivier LEVY
  Blog E-Commerce 
• Christophe LAUER
  Microsoft 
• Laurent BIZOT
  Oxatis 
• Luc LECHELLE investisseur
  ALP Capital 
• Catherine HEADLEY
  Ecole Supérieure de Gestion 
• Gimena DIAZ
  PayPal 
• Philippe STANO
  Graphical Dream

And a big thanks to Jacques Froissant and his team.

Oxatis Raises 4 Million Euros!

I'm pleased to announce that Oxatis has raised 4 Million Euros in investment funds with Crédit Agricole Private Equity and A+ Finance. Just a few words regarding this effort.

I attach a lot of importance to this news, as much on a personal level as on a business owner/founder level. But I especially believe that it's a strong indication as to the direction of our industry, the E-Commerce industry, concerning the development of the market and its ecosystem. 

Our belief, shared by the investors, is that the prospects are very encouraging: the market should see significant growth in the upcoming years, just like it did in the United States and Asia.

 

200,000 sites for 4.6 million SMEs in the UK, 65,000 sites for 2 million SMEs in France, the few companies in Spain, Italy, and other European countries that are under-equipped...it's high time to provide these companies with modern, reliable, standardized and affordable tools to help them towards modernization and a transformation of their distribution channels. 

 

We are very involved when it comes to educating, informing and supporting these companies because we are convinced that E-Commerce is a enormous opportunity. The harmonious development of businesses and their online counterparts is possible and desirable and we're devoting all of our energy and intelligence to the task.

How? By pursuing our technological investments to industrialize services, which when shared (Cloud Computing) become even higher performance, greener, scalable and reliable!

 

I'll get back to you shortly: investors, clients and future clients, distributors, partners and institutional organizations, competitors as well, to explain what these investment funds mean in terms of future projects. 

 

And lastly, I want to express my appreciation and encouragement to all of the different Oxatis teams. They're already aware of my gratitude and the prospects that have opened up thanks to these investment funds...but it's always better to say it out loud!

 

Marc