This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend one of Monsoon Commerce’s two user conferences: MonCon East, in Philadelphia, PA. It was my first exposure to Monsoon Commerce, and I was impressed with its broad suite of products, large customer base, and the rather unique challenges those customers face. Monsoon caters to the small and mid-sized eCommerce retailer, with companies as small as $250,000 in annual revenues and as large as $50 million. Certainly not RSR’s usual “beat, ” but quite in tune with my roots – my father was a $250,000 per year independent retailer back in the day.

It turns out that “channel ” means a whole different thing to these retailers, and they need some pretty sophisticated technology to support meeting those challenges just like their larger brethren do.

I’ve always said that small retailers have the same problems and appetites as large ones, just with smaller budgets, and here’s another example of the truth in that: selling through marketplaces.

I hadn’t really thought about it, but when a retailer signs up to sell through Yahoo stores, eBay, or Amazon Marketplace, or even work through aggregation sites like Nextag, data synchronization problems erupt almost immediately. A Product Information Management (PIM) system is an absolute need – product info has to be correct, in synch with what other retailers and manufacturers call the thing, pricing has to be consistent across “channels, ” and inventory has to be up-to-date. How many large retailers can claim to have those things in order?

In addition, it turns out that even the “pure play ” eCommerce retailer needs distributed order management. Product may be held by the marketplace owner, be held by the retailer himself, or shipped direct from the brand manufacturer. Again, how many large retailers do this in an elegant fashion?

Then there’s the pricing conundrum. Clearly small retailers must be perceived as price competitive, and RSR’s recent pricing benchmark certainly revealed that as a top-three challenge for sub-$50 million retailers. Monsoon apparently has a pricing engine to help them do just that (more on this in a subsequent piece, once we’ve had our briefing – my opportunity to attend the conference came up suddenly, and pre-briefing).

We’ve gotten a lot of exposure to vendors catering to the small retailer over the past month or two. Steve went to the DemandWare user conference and we’ve also watched eBay assemble a pretty significant suite of tools as it seeks to move from “auction site ” to marketplace. I’m actually quite happy to see the small retailer is alive, well, and getting the tools he needs to run a successful business. As a small business owner myself, with a familial small business legacy, I have a special place in my heart for those retailers. Look for more stories on these small retailers and their tech vendors in the future. In the meanwhile, thanks to Monsoon Commerce for being great hosts and providing an ecosystem of technology enablers to the industry.