Mike Ivanof: A Distinguished Leader and Industry Veteran

In our enthralling issue, “The 20 Innovative Business Leaders of the Year 2023,” we are featuring revolutionary leaders who set their inedible mark in their domain through their unwavering commitment, dedication, hard work, and dynamics.

In the following piece, we’re featuring Dr. Mike Ivanof, a thought leader and industry veteran. His benign leadership, extensive history in the business world, and unwavering efforts in running his company, Shop Glocal, make him a standout inclusion in this special edition.

A Strong-suited Leader

Dr. Mike Ivanof is a strategic thinker with a highly developed “Global Mindset” that transcends national boundaries. He has worked for more than thirty years in academia and industry, including as Vice President of International Business Development for a major engineering corporation. Dr. Ivanof has lived and worked in more than a dozen nations across four continents during the course of his career.

Since 2015, his primary focus has been on the development of one of the most innovative e-commerce platforms in the world, Shop Glocal. By enabling and empowering local vendors to connect seamlessly with local customers, regardless of where in the world those vendors and service providers (on the one hand) and end-consumers (on the other) are located, this platform is intended to quickly emerge as a viable alternative to Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Rakuten, etc.

In addition to his commercial experience, he is a published author and an associate professor at the UFV School of Business. His primary areas of scholarly interest include corporate governance and corporate social responsibility.

Shop Glocal at a Glance

Shop Glocal and its complementary framework, Shop Glocal SRL (shopglocals.com), have been developed with the specific aim of helping every consumer in the world rapidly identify the most pertinent goods, suppliers, as well as services and service providers at the precise location wherever the consumers are located.

In essence, these two platforms enable a seamless connection between customers and companies that offer goods and services, with a focus on the suitability of the goods and services based on the country, region (state or province), city, town, or postal code wherever on the globe the customer is located. We just imagine linking the entire world in a simple, basic manner through the development of a global marketplace.

Shop Glocal’s Vision statement is Any Store at Your Door”!

Through the creation and application of a web-based platform, which is intended to establish a network that empowers and enables suppliers globally to reach a global audience of customers, “We want to be the world’s top facilitator of E-commerce and M-commerce.

“Our interactive platform is designed to add value to the Global Community for generations to come.”

“Our mission is an ongoing P.R.O.C.E.S.S. vis-à-vis our network of vendors and customers:

Protect, Respect, Organise, Connect, and Evaluate through Superior Strategy”, shared Dr. Mike.

Aiming to Redefine the E-commerce Industry

The main vision behind the development of Shop Glocal is for it to become “the Google of Commerce”, or the “Internet of Commerce”, whereby any product or service worldwide can be identified and acquired by any consumer in the most judicious and expeditious manner.

By focusing on the unmet needs of each and every consumer on a worldwide scale and enabling them to easily find the goods and services provided in their area, Shop Glocal genuinely aims to redefine the e-commerce industry. Nearly every player in the e-commerce industry has shown a predisposition to structure the wide range of products that are currently accessible; however, Shop Glocal is completely different, as it is primarily concerned with WHERE THOSE PRODUCTS (OR SERVICES) ARE LOCATED (OR PROVIDED), rather than the product (or the service) itself.

Take a look at a bottle of water as a very basic illustration. You can find them everywhere. The current e-commerce players would sell that water bottle, which may thereafter originate from a warehouse or comparable supplier. Shop Glocal is attempting to determine which vendor is selling the water bottle CLOSEST to the buyer, regardless of where they are.

Take a look at a bottle of water as a very basic illustration. You can find them everywhere. The current e-commerce players would sell that water bottle, which may thereafter originate from a warehouse or comparable supplier. Shop Glocal is attempting to determine which vendor is selling the water bottle CLOSEST to the buyer, regardless of where they are. By employing this tactic, Shop Glocal hopes to lessen its carbon footprint, foster more sustainable local and community economic growth, and cut down on the amount of time it takes for a product to go from the supplier to the customer, wherever they may be in the world. The largest e-commerce site in the world at the moment, Amazon.com, features about 350 million products on its platform. However, this number is most certainly dwarfed by the number of available products globally, which is quite likely in the trillions! Therefore, Shop Glocal is focusing on serving the market segment that was thus far decimated by the likes of Amazon by enabling and empowering small (local) vendors and service providers to connect seamlessly with their most relevant customers, those located in very close proximity to such providers.

Additionally, even though many sellers have personal websites, the expenditures involved with website construction, implementation, operation, promotion, and maintenance are just overwhelming!

These costs are in the billions, if not trillions, of dollars on a global scale, and they are lining the coffers of businesses like Google thanks to the hefty fees involved with SEO, promotion, database security, etc.

Shop Glocal, in contrast, aims to democratize this process by providing a fully free (for all vendors and service providers) platform where the most relevant and appropriate goods and services may be found by anybody, anywhere in the world, in less than 10 seconds.

A global marketplace has the tremendous advantage of standardizing the way products and services are searched for and sold worldwide, especially by providing these services in every language, every taxation system, and (probably most importantly) every currency in the world.

Shop Glocal aims to provide a single (standardised) “one-stop shop” for all items and services globally, with a particular concentration on hyper-localization, as opposed to having millions (or possibly billions) of e-commerce websites globally.

Shop Glocal Work Culture: “Focused on Innovation, Passion, and Flexibility”

As one of the most innovative businesses in the world, Shop Glocal has been able to draw in 27 extraordinarily bright people who are now working for the firm and supporting it in its mission to dominate the e-commerce industry.

Since the management firmly believes that the entity’s members are (by far) its most valuable and significant asset, everyone here has a tonne of flexibility and decision-making power. They are giving each of their coworkers the freedom to make and carry out decisions as they see fit, but they are also providing them with a framework of self-governance and rules designed to guarantee a successful and superior conclusion throughout the process.

The company follows a “management by objectives” philosophy, which is entirely intended to stimulate each employee’s incisiveness and innovative spirit by giving them the freedom to conceptualise, design, and implement the best solutions to any problems they may encounter.

Both Shop Glocal and ShopGlocals.com are actively encouraging the employment of the most appropriate talent, irrespective of cultural background, gender diversity, or personal (or religious) beliefs. This is an open-minded company where the ONLY THINGS THAT MATTER are Commitment, Attitude, Knowledge, and Dedication.

Unyielding to Uncertainties

Currently, the e-commerce industry, while dominated by a few large-scale behemoths (Amazon, Alibaba, Ebay, Rakuten, Flipkart, and Emag), is still extremely fragmented otherwise. There are countless other marketplaces, platforms, and websites, all offering a broad (but often different) variety of products globally.

By creating an “Internet of Commerce” where virtually anybody may buy, sell, or promote any good or service, anywhere, at any time, Shop Glocal hopes to become a “standardised” unifier for all these current providers.

In this regard, the primary difficulty the platform might foresee is related to the lack of knowledge (on behalf of both end-consumers as well as vendors and service providers) with regard to the great features, functions, and advantages Shop Glocal offers on a worldwide scale.

Their focus now is to ensure that all these market forces gain a thorough understanding with regards to the highly effective and efficient services Shop Glocal offers in an effort to further improve our company’s credibility and trustworthiness in the global business environment.

Taking the Shop Glocal to the “Next Level” through Advanced Marketing

Right now, Mike and his team are totally focused on increasing knowledge of the platform, its features, and functions, as well as building reputation and confidence in the international market.

They understand that they require a substantial amount of resources, relationships, networking, and awareness in order to accomplish such a major task. This is the main motivation behind the company’s current search for a strategic partner (or a syndicate of partners) who can help them achieve their goal of taking the business to the “next level” through superior marketing and promotional strategies and through a potential capital injection that could hasten the company’s process of global positioning.

Mike’s Insight on the Definition of Success

Success for Shop Glocal is the ability to position and anchor the platform in the minds of global consumers in a way similar to how Google is currently perceived: as an INDISPENSABLE tool that will connect the world and allow everyone to maximise their productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness by minimising the time spent to either promote or acquire products and/or services globally.

The pinnacle of the company’s success will come when Shop Glocal, is recognized as being synonymous with “e-commerce,” much like “Google” has come to be recognised as being synonymous with the “internet.” This will validate the enormous efforts that have been put into developing this platform over the course of ten years.

The Accomplishments and Milestones Along the Way

In addition to establishing legal companies in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Romania, the company has so far been successful in obtaining IPP (Intellectual Property Protection) for its trademark in more than 50 countries across the world. It is also actively working to incorporate in China.

Additionally, their efforts have resulted in the recruitment of merchants from more than 40 nations, with a huge number of vendors and a huge number of items in a variety of places across the world. Additionally, they have a strong desire to establish their platform in MENA (Middle East and North Africa) nations, where they are already actively marketing their special offerings.

The Next Feats to Achieve

When asked about his future plans, the magnificent man replied, “As defined in our Vision Statement, we truly intend to revolutionise the e-commerce space by striving to “be the world’s leading facilitator of E-commerce and M-commerce through the development and implementation of a web-based platform, which is meant to develop a network that empowers and enables vendors worldwide to reach a global audience of customers.

“The key goal here is to create a framework that will bring value to every human being and every commercial entity on the face of the planet. It is a lofty goal, but we believe strongly in our mission and in our vision of becoming the next “Google” on planet Earth”, he further added.

Words of Wisdom by the Industry Leader

For any aspiring entrepreneur or innovator who is 100% dedicated and committed to their endeavor, our advice is very simple: NEVER GIVE UP!

Tenacity and fortitude should be the defining traits and characteristics that separate the winners from the losers in any domain and in any initiative.

Be dedicated, be committed, be fearless, and you will succeed.