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.
The on-line catalog has been very successful. Last March, when we first went on-line, we began with 20 visitors to the site each day. Now there are more than 300 visitors coming each day. We started with an occasional order. Then, this increased to 3-4 a week. Now we're averaging 3 a day -- some days now there are 6-9 orders!
Our goals for our catalog include:
The catalog as originally designed showcased perhaps 60-70% of the merchandise in the real store, as well as many other items provided by our suppliers, but not available in the real store. We had to step back from our goal of having the catalog mirror the store completely, at least for now. Basically, some products are easier to manage in regards to receiving and fulfilling orders than others. We've begun deleting many items which we consider difficult to manage. Some "one-of-a-kind" type items that the real store is known for have been deleted. It has been difficult to convey what these types of items are about, as well as how and why ordering them on-line involves more than pressing an order button. We need to build up more "customer trust" before we try to sell these items on-line.
Beads and jewelry findings are the most popular items in the shop, and we have begun to give them more focus and selection. Over the next year, we will begin to reduce many "minimum quantities." We had set large minimum quantities on some items, like rhinestones, because we didn't want to be overwhelmed. The items which have especially high minimum quantities are items that we ourselves must purchase in especially high minimum quantities.
We originally listed music cd's and tapes, but dropped them because
we felt we couldn't offer a competitive price. We became an associate
of CD Universe so our customers could find our selections there.
The most popular items in the shop:
Beads and Jewelry Findings (by far the busiest product category)
Posters
Rings
Gourmet Foods, particularly hot sauces and bbq sauces
Gothic Nails
Windstone Dragons and Pewter Dragons
Bead and Jewelry Craft Books
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. We think as we continue to increase and broaden our on-line sales, this problem will diminish. We hope.
The on-line catalog has noticeably increased the in-store sales. We've had a lot of new customers, both who live here in Nashville, as well as people passing through from other states, who have come to the real store because they saw us on the Internet. Our pricing strategies on the Internet were to discount base prices, and offer extensive quantity discounts. Our pricing strategies in the real store involve setting higher prices, mostly because we're located in a high-rent tourist district. For our on-line customers who do come into the real store, we offer discounts to approximate the on-line catalog prices.
Working with Our Wholesale Suppliers
Most of our suppliers have proven to be disappointing "partners" in our Internet efforts. We've never put this much turn-around and quality assurance pressure on them before. And most were not up to the test. Some concerns:
o their supply of products was considerably less than their catalog product
lists
o some were very slow in processing orders
(unless their products were
superb in someway, we've been deleted these suppliers and their items from
the catalogs,
if they can't ship the merchandise in a timely fashion)
o they couldn't provide the kinds of "images" and "informational" material
needed to help market their products on the net
o some changed their catalog list of products radically without informing
their customers
We included products from both large and small (and even very small) suppliers. This is what makes the real store a hit with customers. It's been very difficult, however, to work with most, but not all, of our small and very small suppliers. But we're small as well. Whether we continue to work with these suppliers is something we'll take on a case-by-case basis. It is these small suppliers who have the more unusual colors and shapes of beads, or the particularly unique jewelry and general merchandise.
Since we deal with several hundred wholesale suppliers, we would say, overall,
that they need to be educated about how to service Internet retailers.
Why do people purchase items on line?
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.
Receiving and Processing Orders
We have been well-organized and set for receiving and processing orders. Nevertheless, the pace of orders has forced us to slow down our turn-around-time. For most items in the catalog, the general "idea" is to place an order with our suppliers each time a customer orders from us. Rather than ordering from some of the more popular suppliers every day, we hold some orders 1-2 days to combine our subsequent orders to our wholesale suppliers.
At first, our turn-around-time goal was 3 days. This became 5 days. The tornado disrupted everything for a few weeks. After this, the turnaround time stretched to 7 business days. This is the level we want to maintain.
Interacting with Customers
Frankly, before we got up and running, we thought the Internet would be very impersonal. People would submit order forms on line; we would fill them. It's turned out to be very different. We've had a lot of interaction with many customers, and have gotten to know quite a few personally. When tornados hit Nashville last April, our email box was flooded with supportive notes from all over the world. Thank you. They were very much appreciated. We've been able to problem-solve with customers about craftwork; to creatively work with them to identify appropriate gifts; and, in general, to feel a welcome part of some larger whole.
Virtually all of our on-line customers live outside the State of Tennessee. Most come from California. Other largely represented states include Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, New York 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 included,
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
It took forever to get listed in the major search engines. We submitted
our "info" in early March. It wasn't until mid-June that we got listed
on Excite, Hot Bot, Webcrawler. It wasn't until the beginning of September
that we got listed on Yahoo. When we began, we got "0" to a few search
engine referrals. Now we average 30-40 search engine referrals each
day. We've been deleted several times from search engines, especially
Hot Bot and Excite. So we've had to resubmit a lot.
Design Issues
The catalog is a never-ending project under construction.
We've been fixing some design issues. In our beads section, we set up the ordering for many bead categories whereby, if the bead came in 17 colors, you could only order 1 color per order. If you wanted 2 colors, you had to submit 2 orders. We fixed this problem in every catalog section, except in the Rhinestones section. We'll slowly bring this section up to snuff -- there are 11,000 item choices here, and it takes a while to do all the re-programming to make all the pieces of the puzzle work.
The Book Shop had an onerous organization. We've streamlined it, and made it more functional for the customer. We'll gradually add more images and make some of the intro pages more attractive.
We've been deleting duplicative indices on each page, varying more of the page backgrounds, and continuing to add educational and informational materials throughout.
It's been time-consuming trying to keep the catalog up-to-date. This is a design-issue we need to find better answers for. As we solve old design issues, this will free up more time to concentrate on up-dating. For the most part, however, items listed in the on-line catalog represent the most recent product list from each supplier represented. When an item has been out-of-stock, it has most often been a supplier problem, rather than a problem of the catalog not being up to date.
We've become very good at scanning images, especially of very small items, like 4mm beads with intricate detail. But many of the images in the catalog could use updating. Their quality definitely reflects the full range of our learning experiences in how to scan images. Updating will take a lot of time.
We taught ourselves HTML, PERL4, CGI-SCRIPTING, scanning, and now we're working
on JAVA scripting. We'll see what this can bring to the catalog
design.
Thanks for being there for us and with us,
Warren and James