Keeping Pace with Rapid Online Growth
Retailer Moosejaw establishes strategic partners to handle multi-channel expansion
Rochester, NY (January 13, 2006) – Moosejaw Mountaineering, an outdoor apparel and equipment
retailer with seven retail shops, a mail order catalog and website (www.Moosejaw.com) is expanding so
quickly that its biggest challenge is developing systems to keep pace with the growth.
Like so many small retailers, the off-the-shelf products weren`t good enough and the high-end million
dollar custom systems were too expensive. Several years ago they partnered with industry leader UniteU
for their online e-commerce application. But as their business grew, gaps in functionality on the back-end
remained. "There was only one smart move for us. We needed to build our own system to fill those gaps
and take it to the next level," says Moosejaw CFO Jeffrey Wolfe.
After three years of rapid online growth, Moosejaw created Etail Manager, a web-based retail
management system designed to work with both the UniteU e-commerce application and their in-store
Retail Pro Point of Sale Software, one of the most popular in-store retail systems in the world. Etail
Manager leverages the power of the internet to manage staff, customers, suppliers, inventory, sales and
order processing.
"Etail Manager turned out so good that we now resell it to other retailers. We just signed on Paradise
Pen, a national retailer," reports Wolfe.
Going into the 2005 holiday season, Moosejaw knew that its biggest bottleneck was their online order
processing system. "Every year we find new areas of the business that we need to automate to keep up
with the growth,” continues Wolfe. “In 2004, we`d wake up at 4 a.m. to start running the previous night’s
orders. There was no way we could run the business that way in December 2005.”
“We understood that Moosejaw needed a system where the customer places their order online, the order
(after being filtered for fraud and any other issues) is routed to one of eight warehouses, the packing slip
and shipping label automatically print, the customer is automatically billed and all order status and
tracking information is automatically emailed to the customer," reports UniteU Director of Business
Development Rebecca Ramme. “To meet the needs of customers like Moosejaw our solutions must be
scalable, customizable and integrated with the entire multi-channel operation. This is why we view
ourselves as so much more than just a shopping cart provider. The complete success of our customer’s
online business is our priority.”
"UniteU had the expertise and the technology to meet our growing demands, they had already developed
our integrated e-commerce system for Moosjaw.com, now they were able to help us on the back-end and
with operations,” Wolfe explains. “UniteU passed the online orders to Etail Manager where inventory was
allocated. The tricky part was getting that information into and out of our point of sale system. UniteU
developed a product called Channel Connector that allowed Etail Manager and Retail Pro to exchange
data, and a few months later our entire order processing system was automated. I gotta believe we are as
efficient an operation as any major retailer - and for a fraction of the cost!"
We asked Wolfe what was next for Moosejaw and he projected continued expansion, "2006 should be a
great year for us. We expect to grow another 50%. Moosejaw and Etail Manager will partner with UniteU
to build real-time inventory systems, automatic replenishment systems and a lot more. We`ve got a full
page of projects. Everything we build pays for itself five to ten times over so I`d say we made a very smart
decision. Growing has never been so easy or so fun."
About Etail Manager and Moosejaw
Moosejaw Mountaineering (www.moosejaw.com) is a Michigan based outdoor apparel and equipment
retailer. Etail Manager (www.etailmanager.com) is a web-based retail systems developer also located in
Michigan. Contact: Jeffrey Wolfe, Moosejaw CFO and Etail Manager CEO.
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