Use the web’s power to engage customers, Internet Retailer keynoter says
Although 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. is approaching $1 billion in sales with a widely recognized brand, it never stops searching for innovative ways to better reach and serve its customers—such as through social networking and mobile commerce—founder, chairman and CEO Jim McCann said in today’s keynote address at Internet Retailer 2007 Conference & Exhibition in San Jose, CA.
1-800-Flowers, which started selling online through CompuServe in 1992 and became the first online merchant on AOL two years later, does about 80% of its business online, the rest through telephone sales and a few stores. Over the years, the retailer, No. 34 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, has absorbed additional product lines to go beyond flowers and its brands now include The Popcorn Factory, baked goods retailer Cheryl and Co., household goods merchant Plow & Hearth and the Winetasting Network. A new brand in the works is 1-800-Baskets.com to cover the gift baskets market separately.
As the company continues to grow, McCann said, it will continue to brainstorm how to take advantage of new technology to build stronger online relationships with its customers. “We’re trying to embrace technology to create the same kind of relationships we had with the 25 customers who came into our flower shop in our first year in Manhattan,” he told an audience of about 3,000 people. “Today we have the challenge to be more personal with 25 million people on the web.” Total attendance at the third annual Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition was more than 4,000 including exhibitors.
McCann said he spends a lot of time gathering information from employees, hosting a monthly meeting to gather insight on what’s new in retail e-commerce, and also solicits information from customers through strategies such as posting an e-mail address for submitting ideas on how to improve the online shopping experience. As a result, the retailer has taken steps such as posting videos on social networking video site YouTube.com and developing a presence on SecondLife.com, a site that offers three dimensional animated images where contributors post their own lifestyle creations and engage in e-commerce.
When 1-800-Flowers realized that men constituted the largest segment of shoppers for Valentine’s Day, but also that male customers needed assistance writing romantic gift cards, the retailer posted a request on its site to have visitors submit suggested messages. “We received 40,000 messages in two weeks,” McCann said.
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