Catalogers - Redcats plans more personalization

Using The Golf Warehouse as an online laboratory, Redcats USA will spend 2007 adding more rich media and personalization features to its various web sites. Up first: a rich media program that enables shoppers to personalize their purchase of golf shoes.

Mark Brohan

Research Director

Now that Redcats USA has completed its acquisition and assimilation of The Sportsman’s Guide Inc. and made the transition to a new and internally designed global e-commerce platform, the company will spend 2007 increasing its interactive marketing base. It will use The Sportsman’s Guide to help launch new personalization initiatives.

“When it comes to the Internet, I feel like we are always catching up,” says Redcats USA chairman and CEO Eric Faintreny. By the end of the first quarter, all of Redcats’ e-commerce properties, including Chadwicks.com, will be on a new global e-commerce platform built internally on Microsoft .Net.

With the assimilation of The Sportsman’s Guide and a new e-commerce platform, Redcats will use more Web 2.0 technology and introduce more product customization. For instance, The Golf Warehouse, a part of The Sportsman’s Guide acquisition, will introduce a rich media program that enable shoppers to personalize their purchase of golf shoes.

Redcats, No. 28 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, also will use TheGolfWarehouse.com as its platform for piloting and testing new e-commerce and rich media applications. “We see this site as our innovation lab,” says Faintreny.

For 2006, Redcats posted an increase in U.S. e-commerce sales of about 13%, he says.

Bob Viscovich, senior vice president of online technology for Redcats USA will speak at Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, June 4-7 in San Jose, in a June 5 session titled “How to Prioritize Your Technology investments.”