have found success via Internet sales.
Small area retailers streamline business with Web initiatives.
For years, advertising in the Yellow Pages was part of the business bible for
ticket broker Russ Junier.
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
More than three-quarters of his advertising budget was devoted to purchasing display ads in the phone book. He also spent a significant amount of his workweek shuttling his ticket inventory around New England, selling to wholesale brokers.
While Junier’s 2 Guys Ticket Agency, based out of his Greenville home, was doing well, two years ago he saw the pie starting to shrink. Wholesale broker groups were pooling their inventories across the Internet and dealers no longer needed to buy tickets from as many independent brokers in order to offer a wide-ranging selection.
So, Junier also turned to the Internet. Wanting to begin selling across the nation, he got connected to a pool of brokers who share their inventory and began doing business under the name of Maximum Tickets outside of Rhode Island. After nearly a decade in business, he’s seen revenues rise more than 25 percent in each of the last two years and spends 90 percent of his advertising budget on optimizing his Web site to be well-ranked on search engines.
“Business is so much busier and way easier,” said Junier, who added that online selling has had a few years to build up a solid reputation and that virtually everyone has access to computers now. “Without question, this kind of growth wouldn’t have been possible without the Internet,” he said. “We only tackled the Web when we saw people selling to guys in California who used to be our customers. We took a clue from them, but if we hadn’t, we could be out of business.”
A Forrester Research report from August of last year predicted that U.S. e-commerce would grow at a 19 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years. More significantly, the report estimated that online retail would reach nearly $230 billion and account for 10 percent of total retail sales by 2008.
The fourth-quarter numbers for 2003 only lent further credence to such projections. According to a Commerce Department report, U.S. Internet purchases in the fourth quarter jumped to a record $17.2 billion, rising four times as fast as all retail sales and accounting for 1.9 percent of all retail sales, the most since record keeping began in 1999. Online commerce rose 25 percent from 2002’s fourth quarter, compared with a 6.2 percent increase in total retail sales. Internet sales for all of 2003 rose 26 percent to $54.9 billion.
Newport-based Angela Moore Inc., founded in 1997, has marketed its accessories and clothing through a variety of channels, first opening a small retail store on Bellevue Avenue and soon through a catalogue. Moore’s Web site was launched in late 1998 with plans for the site to be the “icing on the cake,” as opposed to a major revenue generator.
“It has been and continues to be an integral part of how we build the business,” Moore said.
She regularly tracks traffic to the site, as well as what pages get the most views and the patterns of people who actually place something on the site into their virtual shopping cart and then complete the purchase.
As her brand has grown from storefronts to being part of other boutiques’ offerings, Moore said she has seen strong repeat customer numbers and has worked to have the catalogue and Web site work together, allowing people to show by page number online. She’s also worked to make sure the site is crisp and cleaner, not “overwhelming customers with choices.” In the last year, her online sales have tripled.
“It’s really one of the most interesting mediums out there,” said Moore, who talked about the ability to directly receive customer comments as well as the ability to reach customers in any part of the world. “There are few things out there where there’s the opportunity for exponential growth. This is one of them.”
And the Internet can also be a great equalizer for small retail startups. Robin Masso, who started manufacturing leather cases for architectural drawings and navigational maps and charts in the fall, is after a very targeted audience. She’s been attending conferences and conventions to promote her product informally and has done one industry print ad. But she just doesn’t see the business sense in selling her product at a wholesale price to retailers, only to have them turn around and sell it at a markup for profit.
Having done interior design work, Masso knows her product is something that fills a need in the industry. After years of watching architects carry plans for $3 million homes around in $2 cardboard tubes, she just needs to reach that audience. By passing around brochures for her product and spreading word of her site, she’s received orders from all around the country and the Virgin Islands, many times requesting special orders.
More than 80 percent of the cases she’s sold in her first six months of business have been through the Internet. After paying a “reasonable” amount to get her site designed and choosing to use an e-commerce function through Yahoo, she’s now planning on investigating search engine optimization and paying to link to her site through industry sites.
“The Internet opened a tremendous amount of doors to someone like me,” Masso
said. “I was able to form an identity and get my site up and running quite successfully
and quite professionally and all without giving my shirt away to a retailer.
The more I learn and see, the more I think that there was no other way for me
to go.”
