Our company is a manufacturer and wholesaler of socks. Our parent company is based out of the UK with over four decades of experience. It is the largest importer and distributor of socks in UK.
We established a North American office in late 2010 and began bringing our European brands over into North America.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
Our company sells to brick and mortar retailers. This means that our website address is mentioned on our packaging. Customers love our products and when they want more they come to our website. In the infancy of our North American business we setup shop on Shopify. The easy interface meant that our code illiterate team was able to just beautifully manage the website. We actually revamped the Heat Holders store for less than $500! In the last couple of years, we have picked up the nuances of web marketing and continue to learn and apply principles to grow our business.
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
We use a bunch of apps from the Shopify app store. The most notable are Spring Metrics, Olark and Yotpo. These apps allow us to market and provide excellent customer service to our customers. Keeping the customer happy and having them shop with us again and again is the challenge and we take this challenge seriously. Going above and beyond what customers expect. Our Shopify shopping cart connects directly with our 3PL shipping warehouse and usually orders placed by 3:00 pm ship the same day!
What are your top recommendations for new ecommerce entrepreneurs?
Look and feel of the store is very important. The customer needs to know that you are current. Building trust with your customer is very important. They need to know that there are real people who care about the business they get from the website and will do what it takes to keep the customer happy. Delivery and troubleshooting customer service issues should always be a priority.