Ecommerce Conversations

It takes a special type of visionary to create an entirely new marketplace. Thomas Parkinson and his brother Andrew launched online grocer Peapod in the late 1980s. As pioneers in online selling, they have weathered the storms of changes in technology and market whims. Peapod was a key player in the dot-com bust, and the company has survived to tell about it.Peapod serves about 260,000 customers from Boston to Milwaukee and from Washington, D.C., to Long Island, N.Y. Thomas Parkinson continues his discussion with Practical eCommerce’s Michael Cox in the second installment of a two-part podcast, and discusses the company’s history, its struggle to survive and what’s in store for the future of one of the Internet’s online pioneers.

It takes a special type of visionary to create an entirely new marketplace. Thomas Parkinson and his brother Andrew launched online grocer Peapod in the late 1980s. As pioneers in online selling, they have weathered the storms of changes in technology and market whims. Peapod was a key player in the dot-com bust, and the company has survived to tell about it.Peapod serves about 260,000 customers from Boston to Milwaukee and from Washington, D.C., to Long Island, N.Y. Thomas Parkinson talks with Practical Ecommerce’s Michael Cox in the first of a two-part podcast, and discusses the company’s history, its struggle to survive and what’s in store for the future of one of the Internet’s online pioneers.

Organize.com began in 1998 in Riverside, Calif., as Organize Everything — one convenient place to shop for storage and organization solutions. For those who have a garage or closet in need of some serious organizational help, Organize.com features a full slate of organizational products, shelving, boxes, bins, hangers and storage systems.About a year after its beginning, the company launched a website. That channel propelled sales to about $10 million annually, 92.5 percent of which is generated through online channels.Kevin Watts is director of ecommerce for the company. He spoke with Practical Ecommerce’s Mitch Bettis about the company’s growth and the success it has had in a niche market.

As with many great products in the marketplace, the diaper caddy was conceived out of necessity. Melissa Bramlage, a mother of two, needed a product that could hold all the essential baby care items in one convenient location. It seemed that every time she needed to change her child’s diaper, the new diaper was on the opposite end of the house from the place she left the ointment. Melissa visits with Practical Ecommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis about the process of conceiving, creating, manufacturing and selling a unique product in the marketplace as well as her experiences running the company’s website, Sarabearbaskets.com.

Roman Kagan has built a successful niche business selling hard-to-find appliance parts to do-it-yourself types around the country. The site was launched in 1999 and has grown to about $5 million in annual sales with 150,000 unique visitors per month. Kagan’s custom-built site search functions help customers find appliance parts for which they are looking within a few clicks. What started as a site featuring about 300 products has grown to showcase more than 1 million parts for 170,000 appliance models.

Zimini offers a digital couponing and promotion platform to provide merchants and marketers with a robust set of geographic, demographic and interest-based targeting tools. If you’re an online or brick-and-mortar retailer who wants to offer a product coupon, a product like Zimini could be the answer. Consumers select a variety of personal interests (e.g., Italian food, dogs, travel, etc.), and Zimini allows a merchant the ability to target specific customers based on the criteria the consumers posted. It’s an inexpensive way to get a coupon in front of a customer who is specfically interested in your type of products.

A Foster & Smith catalog is a familiar sight at the home of many pet owners. Whether a household includes dogs, cats, birds, reptiles or other animals as pets, Foster & Smith has been a resource for more than two decades for pet owners to purchase supplies and products. Gordon Magee is Internet marketing and analysis manager for the company, and he discusses the company’s evolution from vet clinic, to catalog operator, to pet supply business to its successful online sales channel. In the late 1990s, the company launched a website that now boasts 1 million unique visitors per month and generates about $125 million annually, accounting for 57 percent of the company’s total revenue.

Jeff Stibel is the CEO of Web.com, a company providing an all-in-one hosted solution for business owners wanting to launch a website. Jeff discusses how easy it is for a business owner to launch a website, and how all-in-one solutions make it easy by combining hosting, shopping carts, SSL certificates, marketing services, design templates and more into a single package. Stibel also discusses why service-based businesses should launch a web presence. He notes that service businesses can create various online services including those that allow customers to download coupons for restaurants or other services that help schedule appointments to get a car fixed or schedule a visit with a physician.

What is one sure-fire way to reduce shopping cart abandonment? Ed Dawidowicz, senior consulting director for Creativegood.com, provides his advice in the second part of an interview with Practical Ecommerce’s Mitch Bettis on improving customer experience at your website. Dawidowicz identifies some of the frequent errors web site’s make with navigation and design. He also answers that age-old question of whether blue is the best color for text-based navigation link and whether that link should also be underlined.

Patricia Elkins caught the ecommerce bug just like many people do by successfully selling a few items on eBay. It wasn’t long before Elkins was building a dynamic niche business on eBay selling one-of-a-kind tapestries. The business has grown to more than $500,000 in sales, and it’s evolved from an eBay-only store to one that incorporates its own website at Treasurebeyondmeasure.com.