Canadian Retailer - Store 2013 - 100

RCC 5OTH ANNIVERSARY E-COMMERCE

Shirt Punch—winner of two Canada Post e-commerce innovator awards.

came screaming out of the gate. Our goal was
to sell 250 shirts a week. We ended up selling
270 in the first day and were getting hits on
CNN, USA Today and NBC. Right now, we’re
set to triple overall sales over last year.”
Within the past two years, he has expanded
the product line to include stickers, magnets,
buttons, skins and more. Montague’s marketing expertise has also helped him to land
some exclusive licensing deals and celebrity
endorsements, including the likes of Marvel
Comic’s Stan Lee.
“You get those deals and you get exposure to
millions and millions of followers and can piggy
back off their social media,” Montague says.
The company got a boost when it won two
Canada Post e-commerce innovation awards for
best new e-business and consumer champion,
which garnered it $400,000 to launch a new
subscription-based business called Nerd Block.
Book learning

Given that books were one of the earliest
categories to go online, keeping pace with
the competition is an ongoing challenge, says
Sumit Oberai, CIO and EVP of digital for Indigo Books & Music Inc. “There’s been a lot of
iterations for our e-commerce site, which now
represents just over 10 per cent of sales.”
The biggest focus for Indigo these days is reflecting the in-store experience online through
richer visuals, more content and added capabilities. One recent feature of note is a drag
and drop function that allows shoppers to drop
items into a cart, gift or wish list that features
prominently on the pages. Indigo is also build-

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ing a mobile app for the fall. “Mobile is more of
a game-changer for us,” Oberai says.
When thinking omnichannel, everything
matters, he adds. “Loyalty programs, email,
recommendations, wish lists…all these things
drive book sales. The expectation today is
that you are one entity so the key is getting
those across different channels.”
Big data also comes into play. Indigo has six
million Plum members and one million SKUs,
making it one of the most penetrated loyalty programs in Canada. “It’s great to use that data to
get at recommendations and make [the experience] seamless across all channels. How you
use that data is what drives sales and customer
engagement. We’re constantly building models,
refining marketing and doing statistical testing
so we can continually make better models.”

Size matters

Graham Hillier, vice president, Costco.ca in Ottawa says its
eight-year old e-commerce site has just completed one of the
biggest overhauls to date to an IBM WebSphere platform. The
intent was to add more features and products to the site to create an extended version of its retail operations.
“It was more a sizing issue,” he explains. “Originally the site
was done so we could sell more items that we weren’t able to
carry in the warehouse and communicate information to our
members out there because of our space limitations.” The intent
now is to tie online and store activities, where shoppers can seek
out products, watch videos and get information on products.
“In the beginning we had next to nothing in terms of activity,” he reports. “Now up to seven per cent of sales are online,
of which 25 per cent of those sales are from members. That
shows there’s still a lot more room for growth.”
He adds that an e-commerce site is Costco’s way to reach
different markets that can’t support a full-size brick and mortar location. “As we grow, stores have to be a certain size; as
does the population at those locations. We can reach more
people online because we can ship everywhere.”
Hillier admits that with all things online, it’s still a work in
progress. “We’re still not where we want to be. But as we go
through the changes, we continue to work with our vendors
to deliver products that arrive more quickly and intact. That’s
where our real focus is.”
First time’s a Charm

Karla Barton, owner of Charm Junction in Langley, BC, may
not be dealing with a cross-Canada network of warehouse
stores, but she still manages to get attention for the e-commerce site she founded three years ago.
It all began when she managed to negotiate to be one of only two
retailers in Canada for the Pandora brand. “With Pandora, I saw a
great opportunity for a scalable business that could grow without
being hindered by a store environment. I knew that if I could build

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Canadian Retailer - Store 2013

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