Buyer Aware - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Industry Standard, The, Dec, 2000 by Jen Davis

Prior to the Web, getting to know your customers was merely desirable. In the new retail order, it's life or death.

Long before there was Home Depot, Costco or Wal-Mart, there was the Sears Roebuck catalog -- the most important book in the American home, apart, perhaps, from the Bible. For those living outside cities, or who couldn't get around easily, it was a lifeline to all the stuff the general store didn't carry -- in other words, to almost everything.

The Net now plays the same role as the old Sears catalog did, but with a key difference: If you need a purple bustier or a Herman Miller chair, dozens of companies -- from Web pure-plays to brick-and-mortar stores to good old catalog retailers -- compete for your business. To get it, they'll have to be smarter than ever, know all the right tricks and understand what individual shoppers really want. MySimon's Joshua Goldman learned that it wasn't just about low prices. Entertainer-turned-entrepreneur Tracey Ullman found it wasn't about flash. And online florist Mon Benon discovered the importance of a name. We talked with these Web merchants and other folks, like author Patricia Seybold and SmarterKids warehouse supervisor David Atkinson, to learn how the Web has indelibly transformed the retail industry, online and off.

Tracey Ullman

ACTRESS, COMEDIAN

ON THE NET: CO-FOUNDED PURPLESKIRT.COM. A SITE FEATURING ECLECTIC WOMEN'S CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES

When a shopping site works, it's just terrific. I've found daybeds in Czechoslovakia online. I have my Christmas turkey delivered, and it's all really exciting. But I love clothes, and there was nothing on the Web that gave me basic contemporary clothes that I would like to see. So my producer, Stephanie Cone, and I launched our site last December. It's not a celebrity site. It's a business venture that we keep very small. We created the pages ourselves and have very little outside design, because that's what's so expensive, plus you lose control of it. I've been making television shows for years where I write, produce, act, direct, edit -- and I wasn't going to start a business without having total control.

Some sites are just overwhelming -- there are things flashing and spinning at you and music playing and long intros and tons of text. You wouldn't want that if you went into a shop. You just want to walk in and try stuff on and let the clothes speak for themselves.

I didn't want a busy, trying-to-be-entertaining site. I wanted it to be very simple to use, with great customer service. You can talk to people on our site. For example, our My Closet feature, which offers personalized tips for different body types, has been very popular. We're trying to be realistic about how women are and how they look and what sizes they are. We never mention age on the site, either. Sometimes fashion can be very ageist.

Aron Benon

FOUNDER AND CEO.FLORIST.COM

ON THE NET: TRANSFORMED A SMALL FLORAL SHOP INTO ONE OF THE ONLY PROFITABLE FLOWER AND GIFT SITES ON THE WEB

When we first took my business, Floral and Hardy, online, I realized right away that I'd wasted my money. How was traffic going to find us? So I got a link at an online mall. We got our first order from a guy who'd typed in "florist.com" at this mall and chosen our site. The following Monday I woke up at 5 a.m. and bought the florist.com URL. Today, we're No.4 in Web sales in the floral industry.

We wanted to make sure it was as much like a regular flower shop as it was a Web site. Our site loads slower than our competitors but it looks better. We were also careful not to go out and get expensive office space and marketing directors. We run a lean, mean machine, and that's why we're going to do $5 million this year while spending less than $100,000 on advertising. We concentrate on selling flowers. This year, we'll do 45,000 online transactions. There are companies with $15 million in funding that can't do that. I don't want to end up like everybody else. I want to continue to give my customers the best service.

Dennis Honan

VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, SEARS ONLINE

ON THE NET: SPEARHEADED DEVELOPMENT OF SEARS.COM, THE ONLINE PRESENCE OF THE BRICK-AND-MORTAR GIANT

Our plan was to leverage the power of Sears. Our customers know Sears, and they want Sears.com to reflect all the great things about our stores. We've focused on providing our customers with the top national brands, the ones they know and trust. We're learning on a daily basis what our customers want online, and because we're tied in to the Sears supply chain, as we see demand for products increasing we're able to go to our logistics organizations and replenish our warehouses very quickly. Because we're integrated with existing Sears processes, we enjoy lower costs and can give our customers a seamless experience shopping in our stores, over the telephone and online.

Our customers also enjoy using Sears.com to do research. We've added product advisers and category experts, and provide our customers with side-by-side comparisons to help them find the right product. Customers come into our stores armed with printouts from Sears.com to make their final selections. Our online customers are among our best shoppers -- they not only shop online, they come into our stores more often. One in 10 customers who come into a Sears store and purchase a major appliance researched it on Sears.com. That's double what it was a year ago. This is one of the ways we know we're building the future of Sears.