Leather Tree plants roots on Amazon.com
Leather Tree Inc., an online retailer of personalized leather bags and accessories, is finalizing a shopping portal arrangement with Amazon.com.
Within the next month, Leather Tree, No. 396 in the Internet Retailer Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites, expects to go live on Amazon’s apparel and accessories portal and will eventually be included in several other categories, says president Jacqueline Berger.
“We expect to be live around Oct. 1 once we make sure we meet all of their specifications,” Berger says.
Leather Tree, which carries about 500 products online and operates its own affiliate program, sees the new relationship with Amazon as a way to gain more exposure with online shoppers. The new arrangement with Amazon, which will encompass the holiday shopping season, is also a strategy for helping LeatherTree.com increase its web sales between 50% and 60% in 2005, Berger says.
The biggest challenge in linking with the world’s largest web retailer is systems integration, which Leather Tree is handling internally with its own information technology department. “They have different reporting formats,” Berger says. “We have to make sure we comply with their display standards and can send them required information such as the dates and times orders are picked, packed and shipped. It’s taking us about three months to complete the integration.”
With its new Amazon relationship, Leather Tree will also take advantage of other programs. “They will include our inserts at different times in their outgoing shipments,” Berger says.
LeatherTree.com, which had 2004 monthly traffic of around 250,000 visitors, generated web sales of $3.9 million last year, up 116% from e-commerce sales of $1.8 million in 2003.
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