LAND OF
ODDS - The South's Most Unusual
Shop
Beads, Jewelry, Gifts,
Collectibles, Music, Posters, Books, Gourmet
From time to time, we have decided to relate and share some of our e-commerce experiences with our customers and friends. Doing business on the Internet is a new thing, a wonderful thing and something not quite the same as running a regular store, and not quite the same as operating a mail-order print catalog business. The Internet is very democratic, and we feel our on-line store should mirror some of the aspects of Internet culture. The Internet is very "information-centered" as well, and our store should also be. We want to chronicle our successes, trials and tribulations.
Our goals for our catalog include:
Twelve months! Wow. The catalog continues to expand very rapidly. We're getting 600 unique visitors a day at Land of Odds on-line. Each visitor spends an average of 10 minutes on-site, and visits 5 pages. We are receiving 3-5 orders each day, with an average of 4 items per order. We get an average of 35 search engine referrals each day. During the few weeks preceeding Christmas, we averaged 70 search engine referrals a day.
The Christmas season virtually wiped us out of inventory. Orders were very strong, and did not slow down at all until the end of January. Our suppliers were our weakest link. They were not prepared to keep filling orders right up to and past December 25. We couldn't get the inventory to keep filling orders, and over 30% went unfilled at this time of year.
After Christmas, we decided to dramatically pare down our inventory selection, and cut out items which got little response. Modifying a web-site is very time-consuming, so this paring down is occurring in stages. At the same time, we intend to increase the scope of the Bead Shop inventory, as well as lower the minimum required quantities for ordering these items.
We were very disappointed in the abilities of our suppliers to keep us supplied and informed with and about their merchandise. We decided to start restricting the numbers of suppliers we deal with.
The most popular items in the shop continue to be:
Beads and Jewelry Findings (by far the busiest product category)
glass beads (esp. druks, satina, fire polish, czech
seed beads, east india beads, cloisonne)
jewelry findings (esp. sterling and gold-filled
findings, and base metal jump rings, head and eye pins, ends, clasps, stringing
materials)
rosary findings
gemstone beads
Posters
Rings
Gourmet Foods, particularly hot sauces and bbq sauces
Gothic Nails
Windstone Dragons and Pewter Dragons
Bead and Jewelry Craft Books
Yixing Teapots
Coordinating The On-Line Catalog With The Off-Line Store
Our on-line customers are very different than our in-store customers. Their product selection priorities are very different. This has been problematic. It has been difficult to maintain an appropriate inventory for both target markets. At times we've let the off-line store suffer; othertimes, the on-line catalog suffered. This continues to be a problem.
We recently opened up another smaller store called Be Dazzled. This is in a much lower-rent district in a suburban location. Our goal by the end of the year is to close the real Land of Odds, and create more of a warehouse operation. It doesn't make sense to pay the kind of overhead we're paying if we can make more money on the Internet. And we can reduce the hours we have to work as well. Be Dazzled is set up more as a Bead Shop with jewelry and gifts, and should coordinate with the on-line operation better than Land of Odds has.
The on-line catalog continues to generate business for the real stores -- Land of Odds and Be Dazzled.
Why do people purchase items on line?
It still appears that most customers appear to be purchasing items they can't find elsewhere. A smaller group seems to be shopping in a similar fashion to that in a store -- finding items they like and purchasing them. Many customers start with a small purchase, and then repeat with a larger purchase later on. Many customers are very wary of shopping on-line, and building and establishing "trust" is a challenge and problem that must be continually solved. We have more of a track record of working with customers and responding to customer inquiries. It feels like establishing "trust" is getting easier. Maybe we're just getting more familiar about how to do it.
Receiving and Processing Orders
We had to make a decision about how much inventory we wanted to maintain in the store, and how much we would rely on getting the inventory from suppliers after an order was placed. We decided to rely on the "just in time" type system. We found that most customers were comfortable with a 10-14-day turnaround time from placing an order to receiving it. We found that if we placed orders within 1-2 days of receipt of an order, had items shipped 3-Day service from our suppliers, and immediately got them packed and shipped to the customer -- all went smoothly. The costs involved in shipping and packing were reasonable.
Interacting with Customers
This aspect of on-line retail continues to be a pleasant surprise -- lots of human interaction.
Virtually all of our on-line customers still live outside the State of Tennessee. Most come from California. Other largely represented states include Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Minnesota and Massachusetts. About 5% of our orders come from overseas, including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany.
Returns
Our returns represent about 4% of our orders. Most items returned have been jewelry.
We implemented several marketing strategies.
By far, the most successful ones continue to include,
Participating in several web-rings
Getting listed in specialized directories
Writing general articles with links back to the shop, and posting these in
newsgroups, message boards, forums, and search engines. These articles
included
Cleaning Sterling Silver Jewelry; What Glue Do
I Use?; Pricing and Selling Your Jewelry (And Crafts); The Artist's Place
- Request For Submission
People find us best under these keyword phrases:
sterling silver jewelry
cleaning sterling silver
jewelry findings
gemstone beads
michael parkes
geddes
Design Issues
The catalog is a never-ending project under construction.
We've updated the general designs of each section of the catalog, reducing the number of click-throughs a customer has to go through to find the price of any item. This was very problematic in such sections as our Seed Beads section.
We continue to experiment with design and marketing strategies in the front pages of each of our "shops".
We've added more interactivity to the web-site, including a daily news service
on our ODDSIAN newsletter page
http://www.landofodds.com/store/odds1.htm
as well as a gourmet journal to the front door of our
Gourmet Shop
http://www.landofodds.com/shop/foodind.htm
In line with our growing sophistication in designing and marketing a large
web-site, we began offering web-site design and marketing services.
Details of the services we now provide may be found on our Designed
Impacts page
http://www.landofodds.com/DesignedImpacts/services.htm
It's only been a year, but we are becoming a different business. We are now on a path to rely less on traditional retail, and more on e-tail. The requirements and pressures of the internet are becoming more critical to our day-to-day decision-making.
Thanks for being there for us and with us,
Warren and James