Success Stories
THE PROBLEM
A start-up retail company approached The Lazarus Group to salvage a bad situation. They’d retained a “top drawer” marketing firm to brand and provide an e-commerce website. At their wit’s end with bills totaling tens of thousands of dollars (yet without a functioning website) they asked us to help. We determined that they needed two things - and needed them fast:
1) A world-class design with back-end functionality that actually worked, and
2) A way to sell their wares on-line that allowed for the coordination of multiple variables (size, color, shipping, etc) while at the same time streamlining their inventory management.
THE LAZARUS GROUP SOLUTION
The Lazarus Group applies two principles to each and every job:
- Look Good, and
- Back it up with performance.
If you are hoping to attract top-drawer customers - the kind that are willing to pay for style and quality - you need to look professional. We live in a visual culture and the web is primarily a visual medium.
We first integrated high-end photography into a design using color and layout to harness heat-map tendencies to reinforce purchasing impulses. For fun we even threw in “The Divine Proportion” – ol Fibonacci’s series (come on now, you’ve read the Da Vinci Code…). Selection functions were ordered intuitively to harmonize ordering habits with higher value items.
Next we designed a custom e-commerce functionality capable of managing hundreds of core categories cross referenced with multiple sub classifications. The system allowed for seasonal washes, where most of the database content was switched out and replaced with new inventory. When selling custom exotic fibers, one doesn’t just jettison unsold inventory, yet fashion marches on. We allowed for discontinued products to be
re-classified as discount & sale. To support each seasonal offering, an e-catalogue is designed and distributed to tens of thousands of valued customers. Oh yeah – we also did it in 4 languages.
THE RESULT
After nine years, this once-little company now offers over 900 items online each year and sends out a few million proactive e-catalogues and sale notices every year. Online inventory management has had a direct and significant ROI. With a website that processes over 20 percent of its $60 million in annual revenue.
