eCATALOG CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING
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Up until now...
1) You only showed the limited inventory that you displayed:
- Typically less than 2-3% of what your vendor offers
- Your salespersons page through dozens of unorganized paper catalogs
- You hit or miss search process frustrates your customer and often produces no sale
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With eCatalog...
1) You can effectively show and sell tens of thousands of rugs:
- You show everything your vendors make available to you
- You use quick search by keyword, or detailed search by selecting criteria
- You get dozens of qualified selections in seconds
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Up until now...
2) You've been losing sales and margin to the internet:
- Your E-Commerce competition can offer way more selection and has search tools that help your consumer find alternatives that they did not see in your store
- Customers visit the store, scan tags or copy them and buy online
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With eCatalog...
2) You win the battle:
- You can match, if not exceed, any E-Commerce competitor's selection
- You can create private labels that are impossible to search on the web, protecting yourself from online competition and permitting higher prices and bigger margins
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Up until now...
3) Your tags have been:
- A challenge to produce and difficult to price
- Time-consuming and hand-written
- Could only show limited information
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With eCatalog...
3) Your tags will be:
- Easy to create with a click of the mouse
- Professionally designed, with hundreds of format choices
- Loaded with information - automatically pulled from your eCatalog database
- Always complete and accurately priced
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Because consumers like to look at price tags and retailers want to call attention to special promotions or pricing, virtually every store uses hanging tags.
In the old business model, the tags are typically either standard generic tags with handwritten detail that are cheap and unattractive at the low end, or single-format commercially printed blanks with a space to handwrite a price at the higher end. The second choice, while offering a better appearance also involves design and printing expense. |
With eCatalog, retailers can create and print fully customized, professionally designed hanging tags – all in-house, all in seconds.
There are hundreds of design choices and promotional messages to choose from, and tags can be custom-configured to display specific detail about each rug, show other available sizes, shapes and colors. Retailers can use vendor information or insert private label information, show original pricing, sale pricing and more. Select a rug, choose a template, decide which information to show and click print. It’s a simple and as quick as that. |
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In the traditional business model, customers may see two or three rugs they like in the store…or in a paper catalog. They are undecided or want a spouse to see the rugs, but they don’t want to take them all on approval. They ask if they can take the catalog home, but the retailer has to refuse, because it’s the only copy the store has.
Unfortunately, the only option for the retailer is to hope that the customer will return with the spouse or make a decision without having the rugs to look at. The likelihood of making the sale walks out the door with the customer.
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With eCatalog, no problem. All the customer’s favorites can be assembled in a Customer Memo that can be emailed to their home or office. Not only will they have pictures and rug details to review or share with a spouse, but the retailer will have captured important contact information to follow up with the customer going forward.
It’s great customer service and convenience, and increases the chances of not only making the sale at hand, but establishing an ongoing relationship with the customer. Customer Memo also provide valuable data about what rugs customers are drawn to – information that can be shared with vendors as well.
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THE OLD WAY FOR VENDORS
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THE NEW WAY FOR VENDORS
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In the traditional business model, vendors have paper catalogs designed, printed and shipped to all their retailers – often more than once a year. The same catalog goes to all retailers even though not all will be allowed to sell all items.
Catalogs are followed by supplements, updates and price lists as needed for new products, discontinued items and on and on.
- Expensive
- Inefficient
- Slow
- Often outdated by the time they arrive
- Can get lost, misplaced or misfiled
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With eCatalog, vendors can work from their admin screen to set up exactly what inventory they want to offer to each individual retailer – they can release it instantaneously, modify it whenever they want to, alert retailers to discontinued status, price changes, even new product introductions, with a click of the mouse.
- No cost - eliminate design, printing & shipping costs
- Changes made in moments
- From vendor to retailer in a heartbeat
- Always current
- Easy to locate, easy to access
Vendors too can create private labels. For them, that functionality can protect distribution through mutually competitive channels… sell “Bricks & Mortar” customers the same rugs as Internet retailers (under different label) and both can thrive at the same time.
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COMMUNICATION THE OLD WAY
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COMMUNICATION THE NEW WAY |
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In the old business model, using the telephone is almost always the final step in a retail sale from the catalog -- to confirm that items are available, prices haven’t changed, etc.
Other important information like items being discontinued or new products being introduced, new collections being offered, or a variety of other messages might start with a phone call and be followed-up with printed materials. Old school and slow. |
eCatalog establishes a direct line of communication between vendors and retailers; messages can be exchanged between individual retailers and vendors; vendors can send to specified groups, or to all retailers at once.
Vendor message screens provide important and urgent information immediately at top left, special offer announcements bottom left, the vendor news or newsletter at top right, and any new product introductions at bottom right. Video can be added to any section – such as New Product Intrioduction – to assist retailers. |
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT THE OLD WAY
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GOING GREEN THE NEW WAY
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In the old business model, hundreds of thousands of pages – perhaps millions -- printed every year, using enormous amounts of energy and tons of natural resources.
Bookshelves like this in thousands of stores, stacked with paper catalogs, supplements, announcements, updates, and price lists – all outdated with regularity and becoming waste that has to be managed and disposed of somehow.
Contact us to learn more. |
eCatalog reduces energy use and waste – it’s going “green” in retail, with tremendous energy saved by reducing or eliminating commercial printing of countless pages at the front (vendor) end. Plus, tens of thousands of trees will be saved.
Solid waste and associated costs are reduced at the back (retailer) end by eliminating or reducing the paper waste of catalogs, supplements, announcements, updates and price lists.
With eCatalog, there is nothing to throw away and no chemicals or inks leaching into landfills. It’s a better way to do business. |