Date post: | 06-Jul-2015 |
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Retail |
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The Future of eCommerce:
How Bluefly Excelled at
Supplier Onboarding
Rick Watson, CEO at Merchantry
October 16th, 2014 @ 1:00 pm EST
Today’s Speakers
Rick WatsonCEO
Merchantry
John CarlesVP of Product & Client Services
Merchantry
Randy SmytheSenior Director, Marketplace
Bluefly
Who Is Bluefly?
• Founded in 1998 and headquartered in
New York City
• Targets successful, single career women
(75% female customer base)
• Carries over 50,000 styles and 350 brands
• Has served over 1.5 million customers in
13 countries
How do we onboard vendors more
efficiently and centralize their
data to get more products to
market faster?
The Challenge
• Suppliers more varied than previous in-house systems
• Manual process of data validation
• In-house solution for drop-ship, but limited and manual
• Manual process of exporting data to ATG platform
Bluefly Supplier Onboarding
Before Merchantry
Problem Specifics
• Wanted to add a Marketplace
model to traditional selection
• Needed to increase assortment
dramatically via supplier
expansion
• Needed to improve product
data attribute quality
Search for Solutions
• Continue with one-off
integration for each supplier?
• Build a proprietary solution
internally?
• Search for an experienced
software partner?
Merchantry Product Information
Management Platform
Supplier Onboarding Flow
• Since launching with the Merchantry PIM platform four
months ago, Bluefly has:
Started onboarding new suppliers and products on a weekly
basis. 235 to date.
Added revenue by collecting, validating, and integrating
product data within the centralized portal and then seamlessly
distributing it to Oracle ATG. 82,000 products added in 4 months.
Results
• Things to remember about your own program:
Software can only do so much—supplier communication and
training can be hard work
3-4 Bluefly/Merchantry people dedicated to the program at
scale
Drop-ship program must be coordinated through
merchandising teams, or you invite conflict or turf battles
Gotchas to Look Out For
It’s a lot of work to build a marketplace infrastructure internally. While bigger marketplace retailers often have the have the internal IT resources to take on complex development, most small-to-medium-sized business that are that are looking to develop a marketplace eCommerce model model find it highly beneficial to leverage a partner. With With partners like Merchantry, eCommerce retailers can can streamline the onboarding process and accelerate time time to market.
Randy Smythe
Senior Director, Marketplace at Bluefly
Bluefly’s Reaction
Omnichannel at Shop.org Summit 2014
• Retailers “must evolve or die”
• Consumer expectations have changed
the name of the game to creating a
smooth overall shopping experience,
regardless of channels
• Building brand loyalty and customer
retention is key
• Big data will drive personalization and
provide valuable shopper insights
Questions?
Connect With Us
• Our website: www.merchantry.com
• Follow us on Twitter: @merchantry
• Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Merchantry
• Follow us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/merchantry
Thank You!