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INTERVIEW - Lands' End adds features to Web site
INTERVIEW - Lands' End adds features to Web site
NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Catalog and online apparel
retailer Lands' End Inc. <LE.N> is aiming to break the
point-and-click loneliness of online shopping.
Lands' End debuted features on its Web site at
landsend.com that it said allows customers for the
first time in online retailing to speak with customer service
representatives or shop with friends located at separate
computers.
The "Lands' End Live" feature allows the retailer to
instantly link its customer service representatives with
customers using the Web site, which an analyst said could
become one of the first to turn profitable in electronic
retailing.
Lands' End has exclusive rights to use WebLine
Communications Corp.'s "Shop with Me" collaboration technology
through the end of the year, after which other companies can
use it.
"Companies that we have traditionally sold this product to
are high tech companies like Cisco (Systems Inc.<CSCO.O>),"
Beth Winkowski, spokeswoman for Burlington, Mass.-based
WebLine, said. Fidelity Investments is another of WebLine's
customers using the technology, she added.
"It's a way to take the convenience of the Internet and
marry it with the customer service of Lands' End," said Bill
Bass, vice president of e-commerce.
Customers have the option to chat with representatives
either online or by speaking over a separate telephone line
within moments after the customer asks for assistance, cutting
down from a three-hour e-mail response time.
Customer service representatives can also use "push
technology" to display merchandise to help customers to make
side-by-side comparisons or accessorize clothing.
Surveys also determined that people wanted to shop online
with buddies, spurring the "Shop With A Friend" feature, Bass
said.
The "Shop with a Friend" feature allows a customer to look
at merchandise with a friend located at a separate computer.
When it is time to pay for the merchandise, the friend is
blocked out from seeing credit card information, Bass said.
Lands' End also has developed a feature online in
whichcustomers submit measurements through their computers and
see how clothes would fit from all angles, a feature
highlighted in a $20 million advertising campaign with the
slogan, "The website that fits you."
While Bass did not disclose current sales at the site, he
said revenues for the first half of the year were two and a
half times what they were a year before. In the fiscal year
ended January 1999, the site had $61 million in sales out of
the company's total $1.3 billion.
Lands' End shares were up 3-11/16 to 63-1/8 in afternoon
trading.
The stock rallied on speculation that the company's
e-commerce unit could be one of the first online retailers to
turn a profit, said analyst Kenneth Gassman Jr., who covers
direct mail merchants at Richmond, Va.-based Davenport & Co.
Gassman said that 8 to 10 percent of total revenues from
Lands' End could come online this year.
About 20 percent of Lands' End Internet customers are new
to company products. The remaining 80 percent have previously
used the catalog, Gassman said.
Bass said the Web site helps promote Lands' End's catalog
business, which mails 250 million catalogs a year, and vice
versa.
"Traffic to the Web site spikes after catalog mailings," he
said.
Bass said the company's catalog operations provides a
distribution system that gives it a "huge competitive
advantage" over other online retailers.
REUTERS
Rtr 15:13 09-20-99" |
