E-Shopping Sites Get Ready For Holiday Onslaught
By Therese Poletti
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Gourmet kitchenware retailer Williams-Sonom Inc. is hoping to learn from the mistakes of others when it comes to selling food processors and martini shakers over the Internet.
A relative latecomer to the e-commerce game, the 43-year-old San Francisco-based retailing and catalog giant this week opened its first online store, where it is now selling more than 2,000 of its most popular culinary products, at www.williams-sonoma.com, just in time for the holidays.
Williams-Sonoma joins a wave of Web sites launching for a Christmas season filled with hopes and fears -- with an increasingly crowded field of competitors hoping to cash in on booming online sales. Many are counting on site enhancements, makeovers and system upgrades to provide better customer service this year, and learn from last year's mistakes.
``We took our time, but we did it right,' said Patricia Barroll Sellman, vice president of public relations and marketing communications. ``Last year, everyone was complaining about sites, like Martha Stewart's, where they would get cards in the mail two weeks later saying it (the item ordered) is out of stock.'
Indeed, the fourth quarter is the biggest in retailing and e-commerce. Online sales are expected to explode to $4 billion during the holiday shopping period from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, up from $1.5 billion in the same period last year, according to Forrester Research, based in Cambridge, Mass.
``The biggest problem last year was customer fulfillment,' said Seema Williams, an analyst in consumer e-commerce at Forrester. Outages plagued companies like online auctioneer eBay Inc. and Toys ``R' Us, she said. ``Everyone is adding capacity or outsourcing their capacity. They are at least contracting it out.'
So this year, Web sites like Toy'R'Us, Macys.com and many others, hope to emulate Internet veteran Amazon.com's success in tracking and filling orders, with bigger, fatter systems, as moms and dads converge on the Net to buy Pokemons, Millennium Princess Barbie dolls and other gifts this season.
Earlier this year, Federated Department Stores Inc (NYSE:FD - news)., which owns tony department stores like Macy's and Bloomingdale's, bought the Fingerhut Companies, a catalog company. Now Fingerhut Business Services Inc., a unit of Federated, provides order management, fulfillment, shipping, etc. to Macys.com, and customers like Wal-Mart and eToys.
``In most cases you will be able to find out on the site if the item is available,' said a spokeswoman for Macys.com. ``If not, you will be able to get an e-mail within 48 hours. Order processing takes no more than 48 hours.'
Toyrus.com, the Web site of Toys'R'Us, the Paramus, N.J.-based toy retailer, purchased a 500,000 square-foot fulfillment center in Memphis earlier this year, that is now stocked in preparation with what it says is the largest inventory of toys on the Internet.
``We had to build a state-of-the-art infrastructure,' said David Lord, president and chief executive of toysmart.com, a less than a year-old start-up, which has Disney & Co. as an investor. ``We had to make everything reliable, redundant and scalable, so if we go to one million (visits) a day, we can handle it.' Navisite manages its hefty server farms.
But while companies are beefing up their backend, or behind-the-scenes systems, they also have been trying to create a better shopping experience for the e-shoppers who visit their sites. Repeat business is going to be key in a year already fraught with ferocious rivalry between multiple dot-com firms.
``Last year, I think consumers were a little more tolerant because it was a new thing,' said Catherine Huneke, an analyst at Computer Economics Inc., in Carlsbad, Calif. ``This year, people have been purchasing over a year or two, they have had ok experiences. But now their expectations are much higher, they want items delivered on time, they want the items they ordered.'
One popular feature in shopping sites this holiday season is a gift registry, similar in concept to a bridal registry. Williams-Sonoma's Internet foray was in June, with a wedding and gift registry site, which is now nearing $3 million in sales.
One widely visited toy site, from eToys Inc., eToys.com, has a gift registry, so kids can create a ``Wish List' of what they want for the holidays, and avoid gift duplication. When a gift if purchased, it is noted in the gift registry.
Online package tracking or product availability is also important, especially during the holidays. When an order is received at Williams-Sonoma, its Web site checks its entire product inventory at its Memphis fulfillment center, which is right next door to Federal Express, to see if it is in stock.
``For gift giving, you can ship to a total of 10 addresses,' said Shelley Nandkeolyar, vice president of the e-commerce division at Williams-Sonoma. ``You can get all your Christmas shopping done in one visit and you are off.' Company executives call the Williams-Sonoma site, free of flashing banner ads and quietly elegant, is, in comparison, a ``Zen experience.'
A spokeswoman for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc (NYSE:MSO - news). said Marthastewart.com, the Web site for the doyenne of home entertaining, was upgraded in August and it now has real-time inventory, to show whether an item is in stock or not.
Catalog giant Lands' End Inc (NYSE:LE - news)., based in Dodgeville, Wisc., recently added new features to its site, such as Lands' End Live, with real-time access to personal shopping assistance online and Shop With a Friend, so that you can meet a friend at the Web site, and look at the same products together.
``The fourth quarter is really important to us. We do about 40 percent of our business in the fourth quarter,' said Bill Bass, vice president of e-commerce at Lands' End. ``We worked really hard to have a number of new enhancements prior to the big selling season.'
While many retailers are making big improvements for the big season, some have decided not to be there at all this year. Levi Strauss & Co., the 146-year-old blue jeans maker, decided to pull the plug on its own Web site last week. Its e-commerce foray had rankled some of the retailers that market its clothes.
Nandkeolyar of Williams-Sonoma said that the Web sites for the company's home furnishings line Pottery Barn and its Hold Everything brand will also come sometime next year.
And Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, decided to hold back its much-anticipated revamped Web site until January 1, after the holiday shopping season. The Bentonville, Ark.-based company said last month that it wants to do it right, rather than do it too fast. ``This is a journey for us, not a race,' Wal-Mart said in a statement. |
