One of the reasons for the success of online retailing is the convenience factor – shoppers can find practically every kind of product at the click of a mouse and in the comfort of their own homes. For one leading online retailer, making the shopping process even easier – particularly for frequent customers – is a high priority.
“We’re working to create a seamless experience for our customers who buy large orders, across multiple categories,” says David Zucker, chief marketing officer of Vitacost.com. “We want it to be easier for people to spend part of their wallet share on consumables here at Vitacost.com, and for that to happen, we want to create a process that feels effortless.”
It has been 13 years since Greg Selkoe set up virtual shop in his parents’ basement and launched his Internet-based company, Karmaloop. Selkoe, who had no retail or merchandising experience, wanted to offer the cutting-edge, young designers that he loved to everyone in the country. “I was really into this type of clothing and lifestyle and I noticed that if you lived in small cities – out of New York or Los Angeles – you wouldn’t have access to it,” he recalls.
Candy might seem like kids’ stuff to some, but the success of Candy Crate shows how the sweet treats can lead to a prosperous enterprise. Based in Hesperia, Calif., the company sells more than 3,000 varieties of candy via the Internet, including retro and penny candies and gluten-free and vegan products.
Operations Manager Randi Caporale says her mother and grandmother started the business in an office 12 years ago. Over time, the firm found a niche when it began serving clients who were looking for hard-to-find products like Abba Zaba miniature candies or Chick-O-Stick Nuggets.
Learn how this online retailer paved its dot-com path, reaching customers through the intangible. Before Facebook gave everyone an invitation to participate in the online world, the Internet was a vast, opportunistic, yet largely anonymous playing field. And while many online retailers sought to play with its fiscal potential, few were able to fully harness its power of reaching its customers like eBags.com. How did they do it? They kept online shopping simple, and, more importantly, they kept it personal.
What started as a pet food catalogue company turned into a multi-divisional marketplace for consumers looking for community with their commerce. "You can’t survive in the e-commerce business by just being a retail merchandiser,” said Alex Tabibi, CEO of TABcom (formerly Pets United). “To get e-commerce right, you have to do 500 completely disparate things really well at the same time, which is why the time for consolidation of infrastructure is now.”
This online retailer of intimate apparel lives by one rule: let your customer be your guide. It’s a common struggle among e-commerce businesses: how do you differentiate yourself based on customer service when you have no brick-and-mortar store to develop your presence? For Barenecessities.com, the premier online retailer of brand and intimate apparel products, it comes down to personalized service.
This online outsource payment processing business is thriving due to its attention to detail and to its clients. Alan Homewood, founder and CEO of outsourced payment processing company 2Checkout.com, considers culture, quality of product, and customer satisfaction as his direct reports. He spends as much time on them as he would people reporting to him. Perhaps this is how he’s managed to grow his company from a one-person operation in his living room to one with 110 employees and $244 million in revenue.
Differentiated products and service excellence established this pregnancy, infant, and juvenile online retailer. Now an infusion of capital is taking up to the next level. When Jack Kiefer, president and CEO of BabyAge.com, founded his company more than a decade ago, he knew there was an opportunity to become a leading online retailer selling unique products to parents-to-be and their friends and family. With BabyAge.com now firmly established and ranked 280th on the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, fresh capital is helping the company reach for greater heights.
