Bluefly invests in merchandising, customer service

Bluefly Inc. will dedicate several million dollars of new capital from investor Soros Private Equity Partners to ongoing corporate expenses at Bluefly.com, including new merchandising and customer service technology, Executive Vice President Jonathan Morris tells InternetRetailer.com.

"We have a bunch of ongoing initiatives in marketing and customer service," he says. Among Bluefly`s most important projects, he adds, are a new merchandising platform from Blue Martini Software Inc. designed to increase customer sales conversions, an ongoing effort to refine its e-mail marketing program, and an in-house project to improve keyword site search to help customers find the products they`re most likely to purchase.

"We`re dedicating a lot of resources to our e-mail program, to make sure we don`t send e-mail to people who don`t want it," he says.

Morris says Bluefly is also continuing to improve its affiliate marketing program, through which it gets customer traffic from other web sites ranging from large search engines to mom-and-pop e-retailers.

"We`re committed to continue growing our customer base and bringing down customer acquisition costs and growing our number of customers," he says.

Soros last week said it had put $2 million in new capital into Bluefly and converted $3 million of debt into equity. It`s also providing a standby commitment for another $1 million. Soros said it has now invested $50 million in Bluefly, increasing its ownership share to 89.7% from 86.9%.