actinic case study
snowlines
Successful integration of EPOS into online running and winter sports store
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From the start the MD of Snowlines, Colin McPhail, felt it was important to keep his offline and online back office systems well integrated. He set up Snowlines in July 1999 near the centre of Edinburgh selling a mixture of fishing tackle, winter sports equipment and running gear. An ecommerce site (www.snowlines.co.uk), based on Actinic software followed in summer 2000 to extend trade from the immediate catchment area of south east Scotland to sell across the whole of the British Isles and continental Europe. Colin says, "I’d say that overall the internet has increased business by about 40% with the web accounting for around 25% of our present £600,000+ turnover."
A key requirement from early on was to integrate the online and offline sales and stock control. As a small business with limited resources (there are only six staff in total), there was no budget for building a bespoke system, so Colin turned to Norman Rouxel of IT consultants, Drillpine, who developed an interface programme called NorCat. Taking advantage of Actinic Catalog’s customisability and data file importing feature, it links the Top To Toe EPOS program, much used by fashion and footwear retailers, to Catalog and maintains the stock data in the bricks and mortar system. The result is that Colin only has to keep one database up-to-date and not two. He can automatically synchronise the stock data and the web database from within Catalog with a single keystroke and 10 minutes processing time. "The fact that Norman was able to tweak an off-the-shelf application so successfully proves how flexible the Actinic software is and has been crucial in ensuring both the on- and off-line aspects of the company run in harmony," adds Colin.
Another of Drillpine's additions to the web store is designed to help visitors get to the catalogue page they want with least delay. Clicking on the 'Products' button gives a full cascading, drop-down menu that allows single click navigation to anywhere on the site. As Norman says, " Anything that speeds up navigation will help with sales." The t otal web site development and installation costs were less than £10,000.
The need for this navigation feature has arisen because the range and quantity of online stock has steadily increased and Snowlines now offers around 7,000 different items with variants of colour and size on each one.
Although the site sells products for a range of outdoor activities, it is the winter sports and running departments which yield the 98% of the income with an equal split between them and average order values of £150 and £15 respectively. So in terms of the actual order numbers the vast majority come from the running side to make up for the lower sales values. “The web was great for selling fishing gear in the early days, but now the huge increase in competition means this area doesn’t have enough margin. The cost of advertising in the main magazines was crippling too and after a stampede of orders for a few days, it all dried up again. We left the angling section on the site, but in comparison there’s a much larger number of running enthusiasts we tap into now. Marathons also happen to be my passion so I know the market pretty well,” explains Colin.
But one of the big issues facing Snowlines was how to get rid of old lines to make room for new stock – they were tying up half the warehouse space. Colin found an easy answer in online auctions. However, the only profit he often makes is in the postage and packing, but he’s found the bidders will snap up his sale bargains at the rate of 20-30 orders a day. “I can see why the big retailers open a store just for selling off last season’s garments,” comments Colin. “I can’t do that, so the auction sites work for me.”
It’s a cut throat market, so one way that Snowlines differentiates itself in the running equipment sector is by keeping records of each customer’s shoe requirements, since correctly fitting shoes mean reduced risk of injury. There are also links with local physiotherapists and a podiatrist who recommend the shop. It seems to be working and he’ll be launching a new domain, www.marathonrunning.co.uk with small ads in the key sports press and splashing the URL over runners’ T-shirts. “It’s an easy name to remember after all, so I’m expecting it to work far better than previous ones,” comments Colin.
As for marketing activity, Snowlines has got around 50,000 customers on the database now. Says Colin, “With a small investment in an Actinic add-on program I can extract the email addresses which I need for marketing. We only average 120 unique visitors a day (versus 15 a day at the start) and a 25:1 conversion ratio, but I know I can improve this dramatically by getting on top of site optimisation.” He recognises the value of optimising his site to get the best rankings out of the search engines. He also believes strongly that search marketing is best done in-house, not farmed out to a third party who promises the world, but is basically talking about spending fortunes on pay per click. “If you get your optimisation right then you’ll spend less and do better in the organic rankings,” he states, adding, “This can take up half a day a week in tweaking the site, testing new searches and checking results, but only I have the understanding of the business to do it properly.”
Core business software used:
Paint Shop Pro
Adobe Photoshop
Actinic Catalog
Norcat catalog creator (bespoke middleware)
T2T (Top 2 Toe)
SageLine 50
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Microsoft Office
