Unlike most retailers looking to sell their products online, big-ticket retailers need an
ecommerce platform that is specifically designed to address the "big-ticket" barriers that have prevented them from going online.
Unlike their mass merchandise counterparts, big-ticket retailers need a platform that will help them overcome challenges such as:
- Merchandising products that are challenging to sell online because they are expensive, unbranded, not well understood or highly customizable
- Managing shipping requirements and costs for products that have complex delivery requirements that can't be met by standard parcel services
- Integrating franchise or co-op models where brand, product offering and distribution is controlled locally by independent dealers
- Greater emphasis on cross-channel shopping
These retailers need a system that goes beyond just a standard ecommerce platform. They need a
business solution that integrates their ecommerce store into a seamless multi-channel strategy offering.
Key ecommerce platform requirements for big-ticket retailers include:
- Localization
- Custom System Integration
- Online Merchandising
- Online Marketing
- E-Commerce
- Order Tracking
- Franchise/Co-op Extranet
- Store Intranet
- CRM & Email Marketing
- Inventory Management
The
Blueport platform represents a decade of big-ticket learning in a specialize, comprehensive, hosted solution used by retailers representing billions in big-ticket sales.
At Blueport Commerce, our ten years of experience in big-ticket, localized retail allows us to understand your business and apply technology intelligently — not just hopping on the latest technology bandwagon, but finding solutions that work for your unique managed e-commerce retailing needs.
Blueport Commerce works with you to review your site strategies and programs, as well as with other technology providers to guarantee your customers the highest quality hosted e-commerce solution available, and to guarantee you the highest e-commerce returns possible – including leads to your local stores. We keep on top of the latest technology so you don't have to. We find the best providers, test them against our unique consumer profile, and adopt or develop best in breed e-commerce technologies to meet your needs.
Key features include:
- Website Development – Blueport Commerce works with you over the course of our agreement to add new features and functionality to your e-commerce platform.
- Partner Plug Ins – Blueport Commerce includes leading technology providers into our platform, driving down your costs through our scale and integrated platform.
- Custom Integration – Blueport Commerce integrates with your retail systems, enabling cross-channel shopping and simplifying its management.
Fulfillment and customer service should be a priority for every e-commerce transaction – however all ecommerce solutions are not created equal. Fulfillment becomes even more complicated for big ticket retail, or those retailers whose products do not easily fit into a UPS box.
E-commerce can't succeed in a category like big-ticket retail without a specialized technology provider. One with an e-commerce platform that’s able to process your product from order to delivery — and make it as easy as calling UPS.
How is an online order fulfilled?
Ecommerce solutions should make the process a closed loop that begins and ends with your existing systems. A platform should be able to extract your SKUs from your system, and return orders to your system in a format identical to an order written in your stores. Whether you have a home grown system or a major commercial package, the end result should be that e-commerce orders that are no different to fulfill than store orders.
Additionally, it’s important to ensure that your website only features products you can fulfill, and provides accurate local delivery dates. Dropped or discontinued products should be removed from your site automatically. Customers should be shown the same delivery dates they would get in a store, based on local stock, purchase orders or inter-store transfers.
The result is e-commerce volume that, from a service and fulfillment standpoint, is the same as store orders. Your team will know how to fulfill an e-commerce order from day one — just like a store order.
At Blueport Commerce, we are committed to respecting and integrating WITH systems, not in creating a separate e-commerce solution for you to then maintain. We believe that to be effective,
e-commerce integration is essential: your e-commerce must work seamlessly with the systems you use to run your current business.
We also understand that your systems are likely not e-commerce ready, and that you may consider them a barrier to going online. This is a challenge we've faced many times before.
Our
e-commerce platform is designed to integrate with any system— to extract what data can be found in your systems, augment it for e-commerce, then return completed e-commerce transactions to you that are indistinguishable from orders placed in your stores.
Your SKUs, your prices, your product information, enhanced and then returned as an order in your system that can be treated exactly like store orders from a fulfillment and service perspective. The result is true e-commerce integration: less work, higher customer satisfaction and a reduced need to develop separate staff or procedures for online sales.
E-commerce becomes another store, seamlessly integrated with your strategy, operations and reporting.
If you're head of technology at a retailer, we're guessing there's not much we can say on a website that will convince you of our capabilities and the quality of our
e-commerce system. We're the same way with our partners — a technology partnership is ultimately about people, work styles and capabilities, best assessed in person.
That said, we can assure you that in our ten years of experience in working with retail chains to deploy e-commerce systems, we've seen it all. We'll work with your existing infrastructure and processes and translate them into an effective e-commerce strategy.
Our goal? Use our infrastructure and experience to take what you've built online, as efficiently and robustly as possible.
Can you work with my infrastructure?
We've worked with homegrown systems and commercial packages, platforms ranging from Microsoft to Oracle to AS400s. Our e-commerce system is designed to integrate with them all, including unique customizations to your POS system you may have made to meet your unique needs.
We have a well-defined set of "handshakes" with your system to determine what is needed for e-commerce. We'll walk through this with you, and jointly decide how best to implement them.
Lighting One’s business doesn’t fit the standard e-commerce model.
As the nation’s largest independent group of specialty lighting stores with more than 140 showrooms, Lighting One faced the unique challenge of maintaining the company’s brand identity while empowering the individual showrooms with the ability to manage their unique local markets. Lighting One partnered with Blueport Commerce to take advantage of our powerful and proven e-commerce platform that enables each store to modify branding, pricing and selection in their local markets on the fly.
Through our unique franchise module, we developed fully-integrated e-commerce websites for each independent location, including store–specific URLs and site content, custom pricing and promotions, and order management.
This integrated system enables every Lighting One store to maintain its unique local identity, while taking advantage of the massive scale of the Lighting One cooperative. For example, Brose Electric Shop, a Michigan-based Lighting One dealer, never had an e-commerce website of its own and began generating revenue almost immediately upon going live on the new Lighting One site powered by Blueport Commerce.
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