eCommerce Innovations Blog

Taking the Production Line Online

Adam Forrest — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:12:00 GMT

How manufacturers can tap the awesome potential of ecommerce to drive cross-channel sales.

Another successful webinar, thanks to great content and participation from Sucharita Mulpuru, VP Research and Principle Analyst, Forrester Research and Chris Ladd, VP Global Retail, Crocs. Demandware has a knack for helping branded manufacturers sell online by not only providing a great eCommerce platform, but also providing research and data to accompany the industry. If you missed the webinar be sure to watch the recorded version or download the slides from our resource center.

Sucharita set the stage with staggering figures about the impact of manufacturer's website on the online and offline channels. The image below is one of her slides and I will do my best to walk you through it, but definitely not as eloquently as she did (for that you will have to watch the recorded version here.) Here we go...follow the dotted lines below. Of the entire US Population of 300 million people, 59% have shopped online (far left bar), that 59% or 177 million people spend $150 billion annually online excluding travel as Forrester Research reports. And now it starts to get more interesting, of the $150 billion spent online, 45% or $67.5 billion is spent on manufacturers' direct to consumer ecommerce sites or influenced by manufacturers' websites online. Interestingly enough the percentage of people who actually shop manufacturers' websites (38% or 67.2 million people) does not correlate with the amount of revenue spent - making it very easy to see that these shoppers while fewer are more loyal and spend more on branded goods. And further research has shown that these manufacturer websites influences a total of $200 billion in revenue, and as Sucharita put it that's "no small chump change."

This is just one of a deck of 30 amazing slides Sucharita discussed....spend the time to view the entire webinar, it is worth it.

As if this market data was not enough, we had the luxury of having Chris Ladd, VP Global Retail, Crocs speak next to give some real world advice from one branded manufacturer to another. Chris walked through a list of "10 tips" to help guide others to ecommerce success. Crocs, a Demandware customer, is operating 23 international websites and is actively expanding into the Asia market as we speak. But before they were able to have so much success, Chris and his team at Crocs followed these "Ten Tips."

1. Create a good sales plan and role for the site/store.
2. Find an Executive Sponsor.
3. Build a robust consumer database; capture at all touch points.
4. Educate people on the advantages of growing your eCommerce business.
5. Product is King. Treat your website like another store.
6. Find ways to partner with your wholesale & distributor partners.
7. Consider outsourcing certain components of the eCommerce business.
8. Create your own marketing budget.
9. Consider going global.
10. Establish a pricing & promotions committee.

Each of Chris' points had a plethora of information supporting it and great anecdotes from his experience at Crocs, Titleist, and Reebok. I would highly encourage everyone to listen to the full webinar to here all the details provided.

Thank you again to Sucharita, Chris, and all those who attended yesterday...we look forward to seeing you all again real soon.

eCommerce in Europe: Impressions from Mail Order World

Stephan Schambach — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:01:00 GMT

Are you interested in the state of ecommerce in Europe? One of the best ways to get a first-hand introduction is to attend Mail Order World in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is the largest trade show & congress about ecommerce and the mail order business in Europe, with a 10,000 square meter (107,000 square foot) trade show floor, 5,000 attendees, 370 exhibitors, keynotes, presentations, break-out sessions, awards, parties...you name it.

If you are familiar with the annual Shop.org Annual Summit, then you may think of Mail Order World as Continental Europe's version of that event—with a few differences. While Shop.org focuses on ecommerce only, Mail Order World originally started as an event for the catalog industry and sports a multichannel mix of 2/3 ecommerce and 1/3 catalog. Since it takes place in Germany, most exhibitors and attendees are of Continental European origin—some presentations are in German and others in English.

Demandware is a proud sponsor of the community, not just in the US but also in Europe. Thus, we attended as a premium sponsor, with our own booth which was run by our German marketing and sales team. Many of our European customers and partners visited us during the show—obviously enjoying the networking opportunity. Booth traffic was terrific, there is a lot of interest in on-demand ecommerce.

My general impression is that traditional mail order business models still play a larger role here, but that brands and retailers have recognized the opportunity and invest aggressively in ecommerce. For example, the retailer Goertz Shoes recently relaunched its ecommerce site with Netrada, a Demandware partner, and won the "Best Online Shop of 2009" at the show's award ceremony. This very coveted prize is the equivalent of the "Oscar" for ecommerce sites. The jury was impressed with its outstanding and innovative user experience and excellent multichannel integration with its stores.

Aside from the usual assortment of vendors and services providers, there were quite a number of local, highly innovative on-demand software companies at the show. They provide add-on niche services for ecommerce sites with a "European" flavor, such as payment gateways, fraud detection services, shipping, mobile payment, recommendations, etc.

If you are interested in expanding with your brand into Europe via ecommerce, I highly recommend attending this show. Use the networking opportunities to learn from retailers and service providers alike. It's the cheapest way to get educated on the "European flavor" of ecommerce. Alternative: Shop.org has an event in Amsterdam, which is getting better every year.

Jones Apparel Group Launches New Rachel Roy Site

Zachary Cook — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:35:00 GMT

We are pleased to welcome the sixth member of the Jones Apparel Group family of brands to launch on the Demandware eCommerce Platform-Rachel Roy. In addition to giving shoppers access to the full range of the brand's collections, www.rachelroy.com utilizes a variety of visual and interactive tools to create a highly engaging social shopping experience. Here is a taste of some of the innovative features you'll find on their site:

Online Shopping Goes Social
Not only can you share your thoughts about all of Rachel's styles with all your friends on 175 different social networks, but you can also view her most recent Tweets and Facebook updates. Now you can shop online with your friends-wherever they are.

Everything Rachel
From documentaries, to Oprah, to store openings and trips to Africa, the Everything Rachel section offers a 360 degree view of the designer, her clothes and what goes on behind the scenes.

Grab a Hot New Look
Take the guess work out of putting together a great outfit with the help of the Rachel Rachel Roy Lookbook. From clothes to shoes and accessories, the lookbook offers a few suggestions straight from the designer for you to look your best.

Congratulations to Rachel Roy and Jones Apparel Group for launching another highly stylized, innovative site.

Top Five Reasons to Visit Demandware at Shop.org Annual Summit 2009

Zachary Cook — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:46:00 GMT

While everyone else is mourning the end of summer, we know that cooler days and longer nights means it's time to head out to Las Vegas for Shop.org Annual Summit 2009! This year we are more excited than usual since we have so much to share-both in terms of company news and great giveaways in our booth-so here are your top five reasons to stop by booth 707 at the show:

5) Meet the Family
Learn about our latest partnerships with some of the world's biggest brands-including Crocs, Columbia, Rachel Roy, s.Oliver, Liz Claiborne, Frederick's of Hollywood, Anne Klein and many more. As a bonus, we will have a lot of these clients hanging out at our booth throughout the show, why not stop by and hear what they have to say about working with Demandware? They know better than anyone.

4) Fill Your Schwag Bag
No offense to those who would rather a key chain or some other forgettable chotchkie, but we're pretty sure that free Crocs will be high on every retailer's list. So swing by our booth, kick off those uncomfortable wing-tips and slip on a pair of comfy, custom Crocs-you deserve it. And while you're at it, enter our drawing for a custom Burton snowboard-just in time for our Winter '10 release.

3) Kick the Tires
Whether you're a seasoned ecommerce veteran or a brand looking to dive in for the first time, this event is the perfect opportunity to get a hands-on, in-person demo of our industry leading on-demand ecommerce platform. Stop by our eCommerce Studio to learn how our on-demand ecommerce platform can help your online business grow.

2) Join the ecommerce (r)evolution
Full-featured ecommerce platform. Integrated development environment that enables full customization. None of the technology burden and IT capital investment required with in-house applications. That's an ecommerce (r)evolution. Stop by to learn what this could mean for your business.

1) Get Ready for Winter
With summer in our rearview mirror, its time to start getting ready for the launch of our newest release, Demandware Winter '10. In addition to 55 new features and enhancements, Demandware Winter '10 gives merchants access to a full-featured, customizable mobile storefront designed to optimize the speed of transactions made through a mobile phone.

Bonus: A Demandware for Every Retailer
Different strokes for different folks, we hear ya. Some people want all the control. We can do that. Some people want to outsource everything. We do that too. Others want to be guided to launch quickly. Yup, that too. Some even want to see the servers blinking away in their office. We've got you covered. Swing by to learn more about how our new delivery options can be tailored to fit your brand's needs.

eCommerce is Evolving…Are You?

Zachary Cook — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:19:00 GMT

Consider this...
eCommerce has been evolving for almost 15 years, so why would you want to run your online business like they did in 1995? Or even 2001?

That's the thinking behind the newest video on our website and YouTube channel—The Evolution of eCommerce. We set out to take viewers through a brief history of ecommerce technology that highlights the many innovations that have occurred over the last decade and a half. This was an exciting project for us because it was our first video project, we found it both entertaining and educational and it has already sparked numerous conversations across the web.

We hope you take a moment to watch this video and let us know what you think. While your over there, you can also check out some testimonials from a few of our clients and partners.

The Benefits of “Open” for the Software Industry

Ulrike Mueller — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:07:00 GMT

I understand there are some concerns about the "hype" surrounding open source ecommerce software and how it could become a "trap" for some retail businesses, but I think it will be only a "trap" for those businesses that don't understand basic principles of IT—like total cost of ownership and return on investment. Companies who understand these principles and know how to use them are able to make an intelligent decision for their business. Any diligent analysis will factor out the pure software aspect—which encompasses the functionality and features—from the service aspects—which encompasses operating the software and providing capabilities like scalability and availability. It is important to remember that these are two separate aspects and just looking at open source software as a single "download-and-run" task does not tell the whole story. Looking at both aspects separately and analyzing them individually really shows the benefits of open source software for businesses as well as the software industry as a whole.

Let's look at the benefits of open source. But first to clarify something, when we look at the benefits, let's only consider open source software, which has an active community and is maintained by the community. We won't address open source software that has been uploaded to a code sharing website by a smart engineer because of altruistic motivation. This type of open source software is very important for the software development community, but not immediately for enterprises. However, open source software developed and maintained by a community has many benefits for enterprises.

Transparency is probably the most important benefit of an open source product. By transparency I am referring to the feeling of having access to every detail, the feeling to be able to control and adapt everything. In reality probably very few companies will ever peek into any detail or will touch a single line of code. But the option gives companies the feeling of freedom and not being strangled by a "black box." The transparency also nurtures a crowd of experts, who actually use this level of insight. They are part of the transparency value system: I don't have to look into details, if there are others who can do it for me. One type of experts are companies and individuals who will help enhance and evolve the software through direct contribution and contribution on all levels. It's probably the most efficient form of customer feedback in a software product. It can happen in a small scale with a knowledge base posting on a blog, with a bug fix or in large scale with a new feature. These mechanisms are how open source software evolves through crowd innovation. A special form is probably the concept of a plug-in or module ecosystem, found with open source products like Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal. These are software products built from the ground up as an ecosystem. Another type of expert in the community will help and commercialize operating the software or even completely provide this as a service.

Transparency also helps improve the quality of open source software. The best example for this is cryptography algorithms, reviewed by thousands of eyes in the community. Transparency and community together build some things that can be called crowd trust: it's not just me using this software, there others using it, there are experts around it, who can peek in every detail, these experts help others, these experts can help me. I can Google for expertise and find support from others. This also shows that success for an open source product does not come from a single benefit. All these benefits interact and nurture each other. Transparency brings trust, which brings community, which brings crowd support and crowd evolution, which leads to more adoption and larger community. The mechanism can be best called a viral vortex, once ignited it brings a growing community and benefits for all participants.

But keeping that "viral vortex" successfully running is not easy. Some people might also have the perception of open source as a chaotic process of creative people who write lines of code. Instead successful open source projects are very often controlled with a strong regime of values and vision by a few core individuals. The most prominent example is probably Linux and Linus Torvald. The strong regime and the core individuals are the guarantees for consistency and vision. It's also the reason, why very often successful open source products are associated with a company. Companies like Zend, MySQL, and Redhat are examples. They are the "keepers" of the product vision, the center for a community and also a guarantee that the community and the software product will not become fragmented. I would say it's even one of the success factors for an open source product. In today's world of growing adaption of SaaS and cloud computing, there is also a huge opportunity for a software company to specialize on delivering the operations, scalability and availability as a value-add around an open source product. Well executed and well managed, it really combines the benefits of a classical IT service business and the benefits of an innovative crowd-sourced open software product, and benefits both the software company and the user.

The benefits described above are actually all fundamental values, which companies should adopt regardless of whether they deliver open source software, deliver closed source software or deliver a pure service. They are fundamental values to achieve "openness" for any software company. The transparency, community and customer orientation can have many forms. It starts from the company having an open dialog with their customers, to a community writing knowledge base articles and documentation, driving localization, developing free SDKs and providing access to the source code. Java is probably the best example of the latter example, which is perceived as open, without being open source from a licensing perspective. But this openness has really helped with the adoption of the technology, with innovation happening around it and with community building. Open source is often not possible, because of complicated legal aspects, but even then a software company should incorporate the underlying fundamental values into their vision and management principals.

We at Demandware have always been a customer oriented company and as a service company we live and breathe everyday with our customers and partners. Being open is a path we will and must follow.

Ulrike Mueller is Demandware's Chief Software Architect.

Open Source eCommerce, Part II

Stephan Schambach — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:19:00 GMT

Thank you all for the responses to the post on open source. Great feedback and I have to say, while some of the comments are quite pointed, the dialogue and debate are excellent.

Based on some of the commentary, it would appear there's room for clarity and explanation in some of my original posting and there are a few general points that deserve response. The point-by-point responses are at the bottom of the posting.

Before that however, it would be useful to explain some of the background thinking that went into the post, based on my experience being a software entrepreneur—first in licensed software, now in on-demand—and a guy very close to the business (and technical) operations of a healthy growing company.

When we founded Demandware, one of our core philosophies was (and still is) to live what we preach—to focus on our core competencies and outsource the rest. In IT, for example, the rule is that if we need a system for something, then it must be SaaS or on-demand, and only if we don't find a SaaS vendor, we will look into alternatives, preferably Open Source, and commercial software only as a method of last resort.

As a result, we have a tiny 2-employee IT department for a sizable company, and there are absolutely no complaints about IT. We use an on-demand service for email and calendaring, Salesforce.com for CRM and marketing automation, Hubspot for web marketing, Intacct for financials, OpenAir for professional services automation, Concur for travel and expense management and the list goes on. And, believe it or not, we use the standard Demandware SaaS platform to run our website. I am very happy with the decisions we made. Business is not held up by IT.

Now picture a successful retailer with a great brand presence, a couple hundred stores, website etc. Their core focus is to merchandise, to understand consumers and to interact with them through multiple channels. Should this company focus on hiring software developers and IT staff, to build and operate a complex eCommerce platform consisting of server software (Open Source or commercial makes no difference here), databases, firewalls, redundancy, monitoring, backup, security ...? Or would it be smarter to enable the business side, the web-savvy merchandisers, to get their day-job done through a SaaS service that gives them all tools and flexibility without reliance on software developers and IT staff? I say, companies who know what their core competencies are the ones who will win.

OpenSource is a great innovation machine. It is incredibly successful where millions need infrastructure-type software that is free of licensing and modification restraints. But it is a rather technical building block, not a business solution. The higher up you move the software stack, the fewer potential end users and thus, a smaller community of developers. There are a finite number of companies in need of a high-end eCommerce platform, and building it "for free" is not an option for a viable business model. OpenSource vendors then inevitably offer a "pro" version that is not much different from a licensed software product, and it comes with the same problems: the vendor does not take responsibility for the actual business value generation. And this is, in my mind, no recipe for the future of enterprise software.

(BTW: we are not the first to have this debate. If you'd like to read a parallel discussion on the pros and cons of the open source business model, check out The Failure of Open Source Software on BusinessWeek.

As an end user, instead of just software download and customer/community support, I would like the vendor to deliver an internet-based system that is always up and running, that empowers the business users in my company and makes them more productive at what they do best. I want the vendor to accept responsibility for keeping this system modern and up-to-date with best-practice through automated software updates. I want the system to scale from where I start as a company, to wherever I can scale my business, without having to buy servers or re-architect my platform. I want to be able to configure and customize the system through Internet-based development tools. I want to interface it with my internal systems, or with other on-demand vendors easily.

Now to the specific comments:

We did not discuss OpenSource benefits enough. I believe I did discuss some benefits at the end of the article, but the point of the article was not to discuss the many benefits of OpenSource (those are known). Rather the point I was trying to make was that OpenSource in itself is not a recipe for success for a business application and the needs of retailers and brands.

Demandware holds retailers in a captive relationship, where OpenSource doesn't. Depends on how you look at it. In a heavily customized Open Source app, the business side—the eCommerce merchandisers—are dependent on either an agency for every change and pay through the nose, or they depend on an IT department and talent is hard to find, expensive, and even harder to keep. With Demandware, there is vendor dependency, of course. But what is delivered is well defined, and there is the same customization flexibility as with other development environments. Both paths create dependency: the question is, which path is goaled on your success?

Enterprise OpenSouce has an easily upgradeable core. This may be true in an academic sense. The companies I interviewed for my original post though all ran their eCommerce sites on different versions of different OpenSource packages and said that they could not upgrade, because the effort to do so with all the customization and integration is not in their budget.

Many viable OSS businesses. Yes, there are many successful OpenSource businesses and we fully recognize this.

The Open Source eCommerce Alternative?

Stephan Schambach — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:31:00 GMT

There is a lot of hype (again) around open source ecommerce platforms. They seem irresistibly sexy: no cost, just a download away, own the code and modify, customize and develop at your own pace. Many features are developed by the "Community," and you could argue that no commercial software company could employ as many engineers. Also, open source applications that run in the cloud seem like an alternative to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). But the business benefits of an open source based ecommerce solution are not always what they seem. Here are some things to consider when deciding whether or not to build your site on an open source ecommerce platform:

First, if one looks at the history of open source innovation in nearly every sector—not just ecommerce—there’s a natural evolution of enthusiasm from a core set of pioneers, to mass adoption as the idea spreads and gains traction. At some point however, the masses fragment into spin-offs and subcultures, as the developments of one mass community becomes too unwieldy to address the specific needs of the sub-segments. So sub-segments secede, start their own project to address their needs, attract followers to the next new open source project. And history repeats itself. Such is the rise and fall of open source and it is—and will be—no different with ecommerce.

We’ve seen this before, with OS Commerce and XT-Commerce, whose users are now left with an old platform that receives very little community development. True to form, this has given rise to the new open source platform, Magento. Time will tell whether or not it will be the one platform that breaks the historical trend. Sure, there have been some examples of open source software that have remained successful in the long-term (Linux is a great example) but these are typically technical infrastructures that millions of people need, not business applications used by business users.

Second, most brands and retailers do not have the technical resources or desire to "develop" their own platform—for good reason. There is no enterprise solution that is more complex—and consists of more pieces—than ecommerce, and the mere server software is just a tiny piece of it. Experience has shown that the cost of an open source based "home grown" ecommerce site to be equal to or even greater than commercial offerings, and certainly more expensive than a SaaS platform. The reason is that the open source user owns the responsibility for all peripheral pieces belonging to a functioning ecommerce website such as hardware, databases, firewall, security, monitoring, content distribution, analytics, search engine, scaling, software upgrade, ongoing feature development and so forth.

Third, open source implementations will lock retailers into a captive relationship with a systems integrator or agency because once a site is implemented, they end up with a proprietary, totally customized solution that only this one company can maintain, leading to further economic disadvantage after the initial deployment.

Fourth, users of open source must upgrade their software themselves. Often this is simply impossible due to code-level customizations that are incompatible with the new version. With SaaS, the provider will upgrade frequently and keep all customers on the newest version automatically and without any service interruption. In other words, once an open source solution is deployed, it becomes a liability to upgrade and therefore cuts the customer off from affordable innovation.

And last but not least, in an open source environment the end user is responsible for quality assurance (QA). Most functions developed by the community are raw and have not gone through the same level of testing as with SaaS based systems. Being a beta tester can be expensive.

Now, that is not to say that Demandware is opposed to open source—we just use it differently. Much of our software stack—operating system, application servers, etc.—is open source. But we build a commercial SaaS platform on top of it and do all the heavy lifting for our customers. We take care of upgrading underlying components, should this be necessary, and we can afford it because we spread the effort among hundreds of customers.

All this is not to say that open source is not a viable option for your business, but rather to help you see beyond the flashing neon sign that says "FREE!" Before diving into any ecommerce platform, open source or otherwise, be sure to understand the total cost of ownership not just for the platform, but also for the ancillary hardware, software and support that is required.

As a result of the many comments we have received in response to this post, we have published a follow-up post—Open Source eCommerce, Part II. We thank you all for your comments and encourage you to read on and participate further.

More Big News from Roots

Jamus Driscoll — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:18:00 GMT

Just noticed a nice article in today's Internet Retailer on Roots, a customer of PFSWeb and their end to end ecommerce platform. Since the migration to the new platform, Roots is reporting a 220% increase in sales, a phenomenal growth metric by any standards. What's more, Roots is not resting on its laurels: they are looking to extend further with innovative features like fulfill-from-store (which enables them to ship from store, effectively selling inventory from all channels at higher margins) and integration to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Check out the site at www.roots.com and the article at http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=31478.

Congratulations to Columbia!

Jamus Driscoll — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:46:00 GMT

Columbia, the iconic outdoor apparel brand, recently launched its new ecommerce site (www.columbia.com) and we're here to wish them a hearty congratulations. The announcement of the site, found here, details the launch and the business strategy behind it. Of particular note is that ecommerce is the third leg of direct-to-consumer strategy including branded stores, outlets and now e-commerce.

What's also interesting to us is that Columbia is leading a trend that we're starting to see more and more of-the blurred lines between content, community and commerce.

Have a look at the site and you'll see things like...

Referrals to independent retailers that are closest to consumers wherever they may be, at home, on business or on vacation

Community features, such as discussions, product ratings and reviews

Community-building via social media tools, such as the new "Inside Out" company blog

Engaging stories and video content about Columbia athletes, founders and pioneers of the Greater Outdoors

Updated corporate responsibility and philanthropy pages to help consumers get to know the brand better than ever before

It's a bold exciting launch for sure and we'd like to congratulate the team there on the vision and execution that made it real...

Apparel Industry Roundup

Jamus Driscoll — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:27:00 GMT

While putting the finishing touches on the new client section of our website, I couldn’t help but notice just how many great apparel sites are running on the Demandware eCommerce Platform. So this got me thinking about exactly what it is in our platform that makes it so appealing for apparel brands. One of the reasons that stuck out to me was that apparel brands have a set of requirements that are often difficult to reconcile in a single solution—merchandising, customization and innovation—all of which are major pieces of our platform:

Merchandising: Whether online or in stores, merchandising is essential for apparel brands and they simply cannot and will not settle for second best. Marketers and merchandisers need to be able to control all aspects of these sites—from product and catalog data to promotions and price books to content and searchandising—at anytime, from anywhere and with Demandware’s web-based user interface they can.

Customization: Apparel brands need the ability to express the uniqueness of their brand and a cookie-cutter solution just won’t do. From simple changes to content to more complex changes to the underlying code and architecture, Demandware’s integrated development environment (IDE) allows full customization—not just retheming a few templates.

Innovation: With the rapid pace in which ecommerce is evolving, apparel brands need to stay on the cutting edge more than ever before. But with many in-house applications, staying on the forefront of innovation can be difficult (aka expensive and slow). Today’s apparel brands need a constant stream of new features, new functionality and performance enhancements. And they need all this delivered regularly, automatically and at no cost to them as Demandware does with our seasonal upgrades.

There are certainly some things that Demandware does not do (yes, we’re self aware) but merchandising, customization and innovation? Well, our customers are telling us we check those boxes quite emphatically.

Congratulations to Roots and PFSweb

Jamus Driscoll — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:24:00 GMT

Great news published today by Demandware partner PFSweb about the success Roots has been having on the PFSWeb end-to-end ecommerce solution. The headline says it all "Roots Experiences Incredible Online Sales Growth with PFSweb's End2End eCommerce Solution." Congratulations to everyone on the team-customer, partner, technology provider-on delivering success. If you're interested in reading the full announcement, please check it out here.

Crocs Goes Live on Demandware!

Jamus Driscoll — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:11:00 GMT

Congratulations to Crocs on the re-launch of its US site on the Demandware eCommerce Platform, www.crocs.com - the first of many to be rolled out over the coming months. The new site looks amazing and is loaded with new features that improve the online experience for the millions of Crocs fans out there. A few noteworthy new features:

Search: by size, style, color and price
Multiple Product Views: top, front, side, back and zoom
Enhanced Shopping Cart Functionality: including the addition of a mini-cart
Email a Friend and Wish List: for dropping those not-so-subtle hints!

We're very excited to share this news and hope you'll check out the new site. And if you're looking for a new pair of Crocs, you can take advantage of Free Shipping during the month of July.

We look forward to new Crocs sites popping up across the globe very shortly!

Building a Mobile Commerce Plan

Scott Todaro — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:56:00 GMT

So you are an online retailer who wants to be on the cutting edge by being first to market with a mobile store. The big question is how do you get started?

First look at your customer base to determine if they are the right demographic to adopt smartphones, with average income level and education being two of the key determinates. If your customer base does not fit the bill, then until the market matures and costs come down, a mobile strategy might be a few years in your future.

Next look at how your mobile commerce strategy can be part of a larger multi-channel strategy. Consider your mobile commerce initiative as an extension of your website and brick and mortar experience instead of as a separate selling channel. Technologies such as bar code scanning with a mobile phone camera and GPS will enhance consumer facing functionality such as store locators, in-store pick-up, price checking, product reviews, search and store inventory availability for delivering a fully integrated multi-channel experience.

With 61% of consumers unwilling to make a purchase on a mobile phone, according to Gartner, it is quite likely that your customers will use their smartphone to improve the shopping experience at your other retail channels.

When building a plan there are three things to consider before taking the plunge:

Brand: Today brand is often lost in the translation from physical store to Website. A poor mobile experience will only exacerbate this trend. Take into consideration your Web experience and your offline branding elements when you build the mobile commerce experience.

Product Catalog & Navigation: The goal is to keep the mobile purchasing experience as consistent with the online shopping channel as possible. Search and navigation on such a small form factor can become very difficult if you offer hundreds of thousands of SKUs. Also, you must address your staffing needs for managing the catalog, especially if you need to change the resolution of the images to fit the mobile form factor or manage different product categories from what is offered on your Website.

Promotions & Marketing: If you have a comprehensive promotions strategy that has a multi-channel approach, you need to look at how to accept diverse promotion types and optimize the presentation of promotions on a mobile phone for marketing consistency. Many companies offer mobile commerce but they fail to market the mobile site. With text message marketing still a little invasive and costly, promoting the mobile site must be a true multichannel initiative.

All indications and research shows that mobile commerce is not going to hit critical mass until mid-2010. That said, it is prudent to start your homework now, but wait to see how the market shapes up. Watch closely which operating systems become dominant and build a strategy for the masses that focuses on getting better than 70% market share of smartphone users. Write a comprehensive business plan that includes all elements of marketing, merchandising, services, technology and globalization-and don't forget staffing. Then pray that mobile commerce continues to buck the current economic trends.

Gone fishing. SAP, Oracle Endorse On-Demand

Jamus Driscoll — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:19:00 GMT

So there's this great book out there called "Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World" in which the author Mark Kurlansky chronicles how this humble fish in its own right toppled empires, gave rise to new economies and generally provided us everything that we have today, including the Internet. Seriously, no joke. Check it out. The book's been out there for some 10-15 years, but what brought it to mind recently was Kurlansky's factual, neat debunking of Christopher Columbus from explorer and discoverer of the New World to just another party crasher in funny pants.

I won't do the story justice here, but to paraphrase Kurlansky, the Basques in Spain had been known since before the year 1000 for their salted cod fish, which curiously did not live in the home waters of Spain. Sales of cod received a nice tail wind when the Catholic Church decried that only cold meats could be eaten on lean days of observance, which included Fridays, all days during Lent and few odd days of observance thrown in for good measure. Lots of people eating cod. Lots of happy Basques. Then, in 1497, sometime during Columbus's five-year victory lap of Europe for stumbling on the New World while looking for Asia, a French explorer "discovered" the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and claimed it for France. It may have been tough to see the French flag flying though, what with a 1,000 Basque fishing boats clouding the view.

So what does this have to do with the software heavyweights? Well, apparently they've recently discovered that on-demand is how software will be delivered to the enterprise. And in brave proclamations both have set their flag to the continent. Um, guys? Did you hear that there's, like, a whole industry around this stuff? In an announcement on June 10th John Wookey, SAP 's new head of on-demand software applications for large companies, said that SAP would be releasing on-demand applications in "waves" to complement existing SAP business applications. Just last May, Larry Ellison, of Oracle and boating fame, quipped that on-demand segment was growing very slowly and in not so many words was the poor barefooted cousin of the licensed applications business. Seems Ellison is reversing fields: last Wednesday in an earnings call Ellison stated that Oracle plans to be #1 in on-demand applications. Interesting. Wonder if Wookey's move from Oracle head of applications and Ellison confidant to SAP last year played a role here? Seriously, this stuff has more twists than an episode of Lost.

Meanwhile, as the software giants posture, those of us who have been living, building, breathing on-demand for the last 10 years are just sitting here on the beach, eating fish.

IRCE 2009 Recap - Day 1

Adam Forrest — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:54:00 GMT

This week's conference kicked off with a great address by Patrick Byrne, CEO, Overstock.com. With the theme of "Rising Above - Not Just Surviving the Economic Storm" Patrick talked about life at Overstock, the history of his company, and how he predicted the economic downfall. You heard it right, he predicted the downfall and he has the evidence to prove it and you can read all about it at www.deepcapture.com. So besides his deep battle with Wall Street, he helped laid out some basic rules to follow on how to survive this storm. The two main take-a-ways I took from his talk:

Control Expenses
Outsource areas you are not GREAT at

What I find to be most interesting is that at a high level these two options would seem contradictory, but if you think about it they actually correlate very well. While controlling expenses can seem very broad and obvious to most - Patrick made it a point to talk specifically about expenses that effect your balance sheet (capital expenses, payroll, etc.). In a rough and tumble economy it is so important to conserve cash. A good way to conserve cash is to outsource technology that you are not GREAT at (hosting, infrastructure management, etc). Overall some great points, thanks Patrick.

Another great session today was in Track B and the theme was around handling and managing the web, as it continues to gain importance. The two speakers while focusing on different aspects of the web's importance drove home many good points.

Kevin Hillstrom, President, MineThatData focused mainly on asking the audience a series of multiple choice questions that focused on multichannel, social media, email campaigns and more. The questions and audience participation really helped to drive Kevin's point home that each individual business leverages the web in different ways, and that it is important to decide which is best for your company. A great example of this was when he asked about selling through last season's items - depending on if you were store based or catalog based there were two distinct answers. Catalog based companies preferred to direct market in an email showcasing the discounted products, while store-based sites preferred to create sales/outlet categories and market the site.

Lou Weiss, Chief Marketing Officer, Vitamin Shoppe the second presenter, focused on creating a united front across all channels. It was great that he was upfront and admitted that his company "got it." Meaning they understood and made it a priority to roll the direct business in with the stores to create a unified Vitamin Shoppe to their customers no matter what channel they shopped. He brought up a couple great ways to integrate the store channel with the direct channel, and the best part was that they had nothing to do with technology.

Talk in retailer/catalog terms. Lou shared a story about how this related to Vitamin Shoppe. When he first took responsibility of the web store, he was jumping up and down about the number of products out of stock on the site - with no response or help from the organization. After spending time walking through the brick and mortar stores and realizing that when there were empty shelves in the store the CEO would say "looks like the store is going out of business." Lou took that to heart and started saying "looks like the web store is going out of business," and low and behold he received all the inventory that he could ever want. Good work Lou!
The web <> ecommerce store. Help your direct business by talking about how power of the web as a whole - from a branding perspective to driving customers to the brick and mortar stores. For instance Lou and his team asked a simple survey for customers on the site... "What is your main purpose of visiting" and over 50% of the answers were "to locate a store." Amazing! One simple 1-question story can provide so much insight to the entire business.
Look at results from a customer point of view not from individual sources. As a web channel we have a tendency to look at results from email performances, PPC performance, organic results, etc. Yet it is important to look at what customers actually purchased and make adjustments accordingly. For example fish oil products sold well today vs. vitamin C - start from this angle and work backwards to find the "why."

Overall these were two great areas of conversation that helped to open my eyes and think a bit outside the box.

I have only touched on two sessions of the dozens that happened at the show...stand by for more information to follow as it comes hot off the press.

Heading to Internet Retailer? Come Check Us Out

Jamus Driscoll — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Boston here we come! (oh yeah, we live here)

Going to the Internet Retailer show? Hey, us too. When you're there, please swing by to see us at Booth 1039. We're featuring a new offering (shhhh...don't tell anyone...it launches on Monday) that wraps our platform, partners and expertise into one value-price package that gets great sites live muy rápido. Here is a sneak peak at what's coming:

Demandware-leading on-demand ecommerce platform: advanced merchandising, complete control, and automatic product upgrades-worth their weight in gold!
Feature-rich, online storefront purposefully designed and optimized for the needs of fashion retailers and consumer brands-start here, go anywhere!
Plug-and-Play Integrations with leading technologies, including analytics, payment, campaign management and others.
Best Practices Methodology-16 week implementation program that includes strategy site design, integrations, and QA.

I could go on and on, but stop by booth 1039 and see for yourself. Oh, and not only are we experts in ecommerce, we can point you to a ton of great things to do in town, none of which are in the tourist guides. See you there!

Columbia Sportswear Selects Demandware

Jamus Driscoll — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:36:00 GMT

Earlier this week we announced that Columbia Sportswear, one of the world's largest outerwear brands, selected Demandware for its new business-to-consumer online channel.

It's always exciting to add a new member to our family of high-growth brands and we are eager to see Columbia's innovative spirit unfold on the web. Columbia is planning unique user experiences by incorporating contextual product content and rich media on its new sites - initially a US site, with others to follow for Canada and Europe (Columbia products are already sold in more than 100 countries!). Columbia also plans to integrate ecommerce kiosks into some of its bricks-and-mortar stores to expand the product selection it offers customers in the stores.

Some of the reasons Columbia selected Demandware because it provides:

Enterprise-class ecommerce platform capabilities, without the costly Web hosting infrastructure
Full in-house control over all aspects of the online shopping experience
The ability to develop multiple sites quickly from a common architecture
Seamless, automatic upgrades to continually leverage new functionality and enable best practices
Guaranteed site performance and security
Support for multiple languages, currencies and payment types
Extensive expertise launching ecommerce sites internationally

For the complete story, please take a moment to read the announcement.

Tolls on the Road to Nowhere

Jamus Driscoll — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:59:00 GMT

As a company of on-demand zealots, we here at Demandware are 100% behind the belief that on-demand is the software model of the future. I could riff for quite some time as to why-it puts accountability on the vendor for the quality and performance of the software, it helps the retailer innovate faster and realign internal resources to brand-differentiating site experiences-but sometimes it's better to let others do the talking.

In an article published this week in PC World, Mark Benioff, Saleforce.com's CEO, has thrown down the gauntlet, right on Oracle's shiny red shoes, calling for an "end to software maintenance fees." Maintenance fees, the plumpest and most tractable of Oracle's many cash cows, accounted for $2.9 billion in Oracle's third quarter alone and yields 90% margins. Moo.

Benioff, no stranger to explosive quotes, references one Siebel customer saying, "This customer currently uses Siebel software to run her call center. She pays more than $15 million a year for the privilege of having to

implement the updates that Siebel sends her. That does not include backup. Or disaster recovery. And of course, it does not guarantee that she will be using the latest technology. The maintenance agreement only assures her that her outdated software will continue to work."

Benioff is also quoted as writing that the customer, "is paying tolls on a road to nowhere." Ooof.

The man, for all the rhetoric, speaks Truth. You could take most everything he's quoted as saying in this article and apply it to ecommerce. The only edit I'd suggest? Double the emphasis. Double the impact. It's one thing to talk innovation and uptime in CRM. It's another to talk innovation in ecommerce, where consumer expectations of an ecommerce site are set and reset constantly by their cumulative Internet experience. It's another thing to talk downtime in ecommerce, where millions of revenue not to mention brand reputation, can be sacked by some obscure technical gremlin lurking the depths of the platform. And for all this trouble, the retailer with a licensed software platform has the privilege of paying maintenance, for the opportunity to inherit the burdens of innovation and to meet the dirty little gremlin on some Cyber Monday. That doesn't feel like winning.

Benioff smacked the nail on the head with this one.

Adding a Personal Touch to Online Shopping

Jamus Driscoll — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:24:00 GMT

One of the biggest knocks against ecommerce since the beginning of time has been the idea that no matter how great your site is, you cannot replicate the in store shopping experience. While this is true for many sites, some retailers, such as Jones New York, are doing their best to surpass the brick and mortar experience by offering personal service on a large scale.

With a dedicated "Ask the Experts" section of their site, Jones New York offers every customer personal attention. Resident style expert, Lloyd Boston, is always virtually on hand to provide personal fashion advice to shoppers who can submit questions online. As a result, Jones New York provides visitors with a truly personalized shopping experience that leads to happier customers that are more likely to return.

With innovative solutions to age-old problems, companies like Jones New York are breaking free from the traditional confines of the ecommerce status quo. Before long, there's no question that brick and mortar retailers will be looking to examples just like these to improve their own in-store experience. The tables are turned...

And the beat goes on...

Jamus Driscoll — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:47:00 GMT

And the beat goes on...

After a great 2008, Demandware continues to rock to a steady beat in 2009, with the launch of 16 new ecommerce sites for our clients. While we can't name them all we'd like to share with you some of our recent go-lives on the Demandware eCommerce Platform.

We are honored to be working with so many great retailers and hope you'll take a moment to visit these fabulous sites.


Anne Klein A stylish new site, the fifth for Jones Apparel Group	Frederick's of Hollywood The lingerie legend, one of the world’s best known brands	lucy Activewear A leading women’s lifestyle apparel company

s.Oliver One of the largest fashion and lifestyle companies in Europe	Mikasa Recognized worldwide as the leader in tabletop fashion	Portable AirShop The latest site from Living Direct, specializing in portable air products

YouNeek Fan Shop by HP Customizable gifts based on Dr. Seuss, Marvel Comics, Star Trek and more	SportScheck Germany’s second largest sporting goods retailer	Pfaltzgraff Designers of America’s best-loved dinnerware patterns

Stay tuned for more news from Demandware including:

The largest retailer ever to deploy an on-demand ecommerce platform
Programs that make it easier than every before to launch sites on Demandware
New merchandising functionality that will revolutionize ecommerce.

SportScheck Expands European eCommerce. This Time To Russia!

Jamus Driscoll — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:20:00 GMT

Поздравляем SportScheck на запуск своего второго сайта на платформе Demandware электронной коммерции! Эта последняя на сайте занимает SportScheck в России с ее линии спортивных товаров, одежды и аксессуаров. Это уже второй запуск сайта в течение четырех месяцев по Demandware с электронной платформой после запуска своего сайта www.sportscheck.nl Нидерландах в ноябре 2008 года.

(Congratulations to SportScheck on the launch of its second site on the Demandware eCommerce Platform! This latest site takes SportScheck in to Russia with its line of sporting goods, apparel and accessories. This is the second site to launch in four months on the Demandware eCommerce Platform following the launch of its Netherlands site www.sportscheck.nl in November 2008. Again, congratulations to the teams there. Check out the Russian site at www.sportscheck-online.com.

Congratulations to Living Direct on the Launch of Yet Another Site!

Jamus Driscoll — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:03:00 GMT

The team over at Living Direct continues to crank out great sites on the Demandware eCommerce Platform. The latest creation? http://www.portableairshop.com/, a site singly focused on expert information, sales and service for portable air conditioners and portable air accessories. Congratulations to the team there for the launch, which went live early this morning. The site was built entirely by them, using in-house developers and design resources. This is a great example for how Demandware clients are completely in control over customization, development and launch of sites on the Demandware eCommerce Platform.

Living Direct is onto something. Previously known as Richlund Ventures, Living Direct was founded in 1999 by visionary entrepreneur Rick Lundbom who is bringing to market a diversified group of hard-to-find appliances that add a different dimension to modern small-space living. Today, it is a Top 500 e-retailer corporate brand that acts as an umbrella to different specific microsites and categories, each focusing on its product niche. Other Living Direct brands running live on the Demandware platform include compactappliance.com, livingdirect.com, hotwatersource.com and my personal favorite, kegerator.com, a bonanza for, ahem, "home & commercial keg refrigerators." Good times...

Community Bloom: How User Generated Photos Deliver Rich, Differentiated Shopping Experiences for Dutch Gardens

Jamus Driscoll — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:35:00 GMT

Over the past couple years, user generated content (UGC) has moved from an ecommerce nice-to-have to table stakes. Most often this is thought of as rating and reviews, such as the functionality offered by Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews, but America's Gardening Resource has taken it a step further. On Dutch Gardens, the live-products brand of America's Gardening Resources, customers can upload and share photos of their garden's beauty onto the Dutch Gardens Photo Center where they can be viewed by fellow-and passionate-gardeners. In so doing, Dutch Gardens differentiates its brand through unique, customer-generated photography. This type of user collaboration and sharing has made Dutch Gardens more than just a commerce site; it's a Web 2.0 destination site that flourishes with repeat visitors and a sense of community and brand loyalty.

Mikasa Goes Live!

Jamus Driscoll — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:33:00 GMT

Congratulations to the team at Lifetime Brands for the launch of their second site on the Demandware On-Demand eCommerce Platform.

Mikasa, the worldwide leader in tabletop fashion in dinnerware, crystal stemware, barware, flatware and decorative accessories, recently launched a new site that allows consumers to explore (and of course buy!) their line of elegant dining ware through features like product QuickLook, image zoom, faceted search and others.

Some quick facts about Mikasa, which are sure to come in handy at your next dinner party:

George Aratani initially founded Mikasa as American Commercial Inc. in the state of California in 1948
Initially a dinnerware importer, Mikasa grew into a dinnerware wholesaler over the next twenty years supplying dinnerware to Bloomingdales, Macy's, May Department Stores Company and other fine retailers.
In 1957, the brand name Mikasa was introduced to the American public.

Congratulations again to the team at Lifetime Brands for the launch!