Operating margin in e-commerce: why selling more does not always mean making more profit

The advancement of marketplaces on the national scene has consolidated the third-party platform model as the main driver of digital retail, accounting for around 70% of online sales in the country. However, this accelerated growth has brought to light a worrying operational paradox for thousands of store owners: the illusion of revenue. The significant increase in the volume of orders has not necessarily translated into cash at the end of the month, generating a scenario of margin compression that challenges the survival of businesses.

According to Cassio Serea, Director of Koncili, a financial reconciliation solution specializing in marketplaces developed by the DB1 Group, there is a common confusion among entrepreneurs who are in the expansion phase.

“Theoretically, sales growth should result in an increase in profit, but the reality depends on the margin sacrificed and the level of financial control applied. Selling more does not necessarily mean receiving more. When the volume of orders increases, costs also rise: there is more commission for the marketplace, more shipping and more investment in advertising to maintain visibility. If the seller does not keep track of what is left order by order, he can work much harder to have the same net result. High revenue on the dashboard is not synonymous with money in the cash register.”

The main factor for the silent erosion of profits lies in the so-called “invisible costs”, which are already part of the operational routine, but are rarely measured with surgical precision. Commissions that vary by product category, shipping costs absorbed in returns and participation in aggressive discount campaigns drastically reduce the value passed on by the platforms. Because they are all deducted directly before the final bank deposit, these discounts become difficult to track without a detailed audit.

Complexity intensifies as companies adopt multichannel strategies to stay competitive in the face of fierce competition. “Each new channel that the seller enters has its own payment cycle, its own rates and its own transfer format. What worked to financially control a channel starts to fail when there are five or ten operating simultaneously. The amount of information to cross-reference grows much faster than the operational capacity of the team. Anyone who doesn't organize this financial part from the beginning ends up not knowing how much each channel actually paid and which one is worth keeping with the same level of investment”, points out Serea.

According to the executive, the signs that an operation is growing unsustainably are clear: revenue increases, but the anticipation of receivables becomes a routine to cover the operational flow, while real profit remains stagnant. Faced with a market that is becoming increasingly expensive to operate, driven by the increase in the cost of digital media spaces and the arrival of new modalities, such as live commerce, protecting margins necessarily involves automation.