Revenue per Employee in eCommerce

We have been having a battle with some existing service providers and established businesses however in the process across the correct terminology, revenue per employee, having linked with a company that generates via a platform layer $1-2mil revenue per employee.

This is the metric that markets use to provide a simple overview of a company. For small business most platforms such as Shopify or WooCommerce are niche and limit to ~$75,000 revenue, your time and number of employees is your growth. Platforms such as Magento CE automate some of the tasks pushing this up to $220,000 revenue per employee.

Now companies such as Amazon have a revenue per employee of $750,000, Google $1.2mil. Due to the tough financial environment these companies, via their automation, are now squeezing in to small business markets using low margins and high growth strategies. To counteract this only platforms such as Hybris/Demandware with $500,000 revenue per employee or WebSphere/ATG with $1mil revenue per employee have the functionality to compete, both of these cost $100,000s to $millions to implement.

We have an ongoing link with a specialist consultancy that implement layers (designed over 2-3yrs by separate architecture company) over platforms including Magento, Hybris and WebSphere, of which the Magento version is the interesting one here. This layer increases the Magento maximum revenue per employee from $220,000 to $1-1.2million using enterprise techniques derived from solutions including SAP.

The VC who funded the architecture development have stated they are willing to fund up to 80% of the monthly platform cost. This provides a startup with access to the same automation efficiency as Amazon with a startup cost basis of a standard small business. Their entire goal is very simple, to create $100s millions companies within 3-5yrs generating net profits for the startup directors and themselves in the $10s millions.

Now we are quite aware everyone will jump up and down and say, this is a sales pitch, simply no. Everyone including ourselves only make money when the startups generate $millions revenue, between is either a loss or neutral. The architects and VC at the top of this chain have effective chargeouts of $1-2million each per year, hence why they know how to do it. We also sold/dropped our previous generation $250,000 revenue per employee sites to work on this new $1-2mil structure, we are all in the same boat, the retailer doesn't generate high-growth high revenue per employee, none of us do. Just the way it should be.