Posted on 9th Jun 2010 @ 8:43 AM

Six years ago I was contemplating the decision of purchasing a retail store.  For the previous 20 years I had spent my career working in non-profit social services and the Information Technology Field.  For the past 10 years I had been teaching Computer Networking at our local community college.  My educational background was in business administration and entreprenurielism.   As I evaluated my new business opportunity I contemplated the opportunity to take a relatively stable local business and combine it with an internet business to create a really successful venture.  In my mind (at that time) it seemed that I could increase overall gross profits without a need to increase physical overhead.  I would be selling online in a virtual environment afterall.  What brick and mortar retail owner wouldn't jump at the opportunity to increase customers and sales without needing to increase the size of their store?

As it turns out this was not nearly as easy as I imagined it to be.  I came to the table with 20+ years of information technology experience.  I was teaching students on a daily basis how to setup and manage computer networks including internet services.  This should be a natural progression for me.   Boy was I in for a surprise.

So first for the motivation...  As I began writing this article I thought; "Would I make the same decisions today?"  My first question is just how valuable is an internet presence to a brick and mortar retail store, or to any retail / wholesale vendor?  I did a little research and here are a few statistics to answer that question.

Your average online shopper could be male or female, they are most likely to be in their 30s or 40s and reasonably likely to be above average education and affluence. U.S. online sales are expected to reach $248.7 billion by the year 2014 averaging annual growth of 7-8%.  The more striking number in my mind is the combined internet retail sales and web influenced sales.  Web influenced sales represent consumers who start their research online and then end up making a purchase in the physical retail store.  These sales are expected to grow to $1,409 billion by 2014 and represent 53% of all retail sales. (See Note 1.)

So to answer that question. "Yes I would make the same choice today."  I truly believe that to be fully successful it is extremely important for us to have an online retail presence.

Now  for a little background... When I started my research back in 2004 I started looking for eCommerce solutions (online shopping carts).  Since my business was essentially a bookstore I began looking at bookstore resources.  Our first choice was an already established internet bookstore solution that allowed me to customize the site for my business but they handled all the inventory, merchant services, bookkeeping, shipping calculations, etc..  It was great.  It was easy.  But it cost me nearly $300 per month and didn't generate hardly any revenue.  In addition, it didn't let me customize the inventory to match the inventory actually stocked in my store.  So it didn't do much in the way of helping my local customers pre-shop on line (remember the 53% of all shoppers who start online).

So after a year we decided that solution was not helping us to meet our goals.

So back to the research again...  This time I selected a standalone shopping cart.  Choose an internet hosting service.  Installed my cart and then began the process of learning how to sell online.  Wow there was a lot to learn.  How will we process payments?  (So many choices, negotiations, and fees).  Second how will we estimate shipping?  (Again more research, setup shipping accounts, figure out how to integrate with shopping cart.)  Now, what about sales tax?  (More research, tax laws, tax calculations, more configuration...).  

So now what was that profound saying?  "Build it and they will come!" Ok, so we built it.  And then we waited....  and we waited some more...  we got a sale... we were excited... now we are waiting some more...

Ok, back to the research again...  Why aren't they coming?  Now our internet store reflects the merchandise we sell.  You can see the merchandise online and come into the store and buy it.  We actually went even better and negotiated some direct ship arrangements with vendors to sell merchandise online.  This allowed us to offer even more merchandise in our online store than we could afford to stock in the store.  But still they weren't coming.

Time for internet marketing research...  How do we get customers to find our website and then convert them to actual purchasers.  Turns out this is probably the hardest part of the whole process.  There are two major factors here.   The first is what is referred to as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short.  It is the process of ensuring, that when someone uses a search engine to search for a product, service or information, your site shows up at the very top of this list for products you are offering.  It takes an understanding of how customers are searching and how to configure your site to respond to those searches.

The second concept is conversion rate.  This is a process of having the merchandise the shopper desires and instilling confidence in the shopper that you are the best choice for that purchase.  These includes many things.  Making sure the purchase process is streamlined so the customer doesn't get confused in the checkout process.  Ensuring security measures are taken so the customer feels confident their transaction will be secure.  

What I realized is that I was getting killed as the little fish in the big sea of corporate sites.  Sound familiar?  Seems like the same battle we are fighting as independent retailers and wholesalers everywhere.  Basically I just wasn't getting enough customers to my store to really make a difference.

Are you overwhelmed yet?  Well I was.  This is why I choose Wild Iris Market.   With Wild Iris Market, they are taking care of all these things.  They have already designed their site to handle payment processing, shipping configurations, checkout security.  They have developed a complete system of Search Engine Optimization marketing.

Basically Wild Iris Market makes it much easier for me to get my store online.  (Less time and effort on my part equals more profits in the long run.) They also give me the economies of scale I need to compete with the big box stores even on the internet.  Because of its multivendor format all of our efforts to market our stores combine together with Wild Iris Markets efforts and expertise to attract many more customers to our site.  

Here is an example.  If in the past I was able to attract an average of 5,000 customers per month to my site, and Wild Iris Market hosts 25 other vendors much like me, just combining our customer base exposes each of our stores to 125,000 customers per month.  This gives me an increase of 2,400% in my customer base.  Now I still have to work on marketing my store, and I have to work on conversion rates for my products.  And Wild Iris Market is helping me out there too.  They are building an entire support site for vendors that will allow me to network and learn from other vendors how to best position my products for success.  And if I want a blog to help market my store even better, they have options for me there too!  This is a total solution that supports me from beginning to end in deploying, marketing and converting my customers to actual sales.

I really love the community like atmosphere and the concept of all of us working together to create a win - win situation for everyone.  We are all manifesting our prosperity together and raising the energy vibration.  I also love that Wild Iris Market's focus on the LOHAS market is consistent with my businesses mission to be socially and environmentally responsible.  To offer products that are beneficial to society and do business in an ethical sustainable manner.

Cheryl Krauth
Wild Iris Books 

Cheryl Krauth is one of three owners of Wild Iris Books and a founding partner in Wild Iris Market.  Her motivation in helping establish Wild Iris Market was to help entreprenuers like herself to succeed in an internet marketplace.  She feels Wild Iris Market gives it's vendors the same market advantages and economies of scale of the large corporate retailers while allowing them to retain their autonomy and commitment to socially and environmentally responsible business practices.

Forrester Forecast: Online Retail Sales Will Grow To $250 Billion By 2014, by Erick Schonfeld on Mar 8, 2010.  Retrieved from:   http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/08/forrester-forecast-online-retail-sales-will-grow-to-250-billion-by-2014/