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:
The fifteenth month was a Milestone of sorts. Our host took our catalog off-line, (unfortunately without any warning), because the activity on our site was too high, and in the continuing process of sky-rocketing ever-upwards. We were now seeing 600 or more unique visitors every day, and averaging 3-5 orders and up each day. Our host wanted us to upgrade our services, but we sought out another host. In either case, we'd have to spend weeks re-writing our interactive programs that make the catalog work, so we sought out another firm that we hope will be more professional in handling, what otherwise would be good news.
But we have been feeling this rapid growth in other ways. The main description characterizing these past 3 months is one of being overwhelmed. The orders are more frequent, and larger. In our efforts to try to keep the orders filled, and shipped out in a reasonable 5-7 day timeframe, we neglected the other "business basics". We didn't replenish our inventory. We fell behind in our own ordering, as well as in the frequent orders we place in order to fill our own on-line orders. We ran out of shipping materials. [Another milestone of sorts: we're now using more boxes to ship items out than the number of boxes with inventory coming in. For the first time, we've had go buy boxes.] We fell very behind in responding to emails. What once was kept to a response within 3-days, now stretched out to 5 or 6 days.
I hate to admit it, but our level of service really deteriorated these past 3 months.
Unfortunately, the increased volume still can't justify additional personnel. The catalog still has a ways to go towards this end.
One thing that will be happening, however, is that we will be closing the real downtown Land of Odds store in October. Our business will become mostly Internet, with the addition of our suburban store Be Dazzled. Given the on-line catalog experience, we couldn't justify the overhead of the downtown store. The catalog also lets us provide our customers with a much wider selection of products, and at a lower price, as well.
We will also continue to narrow the on-line catalog towards "Beads", with more limited selections in the other "shops".
We've had a lot of positive experiences designing, implementing and marketing our on-line catalog. We decided to leverage these experiences by started the Designed Impacts Division of Land of Odds. Designed Impacts sells internet marketing and design services. Its home page is http://www.landofodds.com/DesignedImpacts/services.htm
We have really been struggling with keeping an adequate inventory in stock. Towards this end, we've been cutting out substantial numbers of items in the non-bead shop sections of the catalog. We've also drastically reduced the number of suppliers we are willing to deal with.
Many of our major suppliers notified us that they were taking vacations the first week or two of July, so we put ourselves "On Vacation" during this time period. I wanted to minimize the types of problems we had during the two week period after Christmas.
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
We've had a substantial increase in wholesale customers on-line.
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
We've had few returns in this time period.
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.
It's only been a year and 3 months, but we've hit some walls -- our host's limit on the server, and our staff and inventory capabilities to process our current volume of orders. What fun!
Thanks for being there for us and with us,
Warren and James