How Down East slew the cross-channel integration dragon

Down East Outfitters is a Utah-based chain of 12 liquidation stores that until a year ago did not have a web site. But that doesn’t mean its merchandise wasn’t selling on the web; customers who were finding great bargains at Down East Outfitter stores were selling their finds on eBay. Deciding that if its customers could turn a profit on the merchandise, so could Down East, the company decided to reap some of the higher prices that merchandise was commanding on eBay. It launched an eBay store a year ago, and its own web site--BrandNameOutlet.com--a short time later.

But with the site, it quickly learned a lesson that other store retailers have learned as they’ve ventured into cyberspace: It had no way to tie its store sales and inventory information to its web sales and inventory information. “We realized we had no technical expertise to build on from our back office system,” says Rob Edwards, Down East’s director of online operations. “Our POS back office system was not designed to work as an inventory management system for a web site.”

The link between the two operations was crucial because Down East wanted to be able to market to both its store customers and online customers from a single database. It turned to retail systems provider CoreSense Inc. to pull its channels together. “CoreSense has allowed us to centralize our inventory,” Edwards says. “From ordering to fulfillment, everything goes back into our store system and we don’t need to maintain or train people on two systems. In terms of manpower and training, it’s saved us quite a bit of money.”

Among the benefits that Down East has gained by linking channels is an integrated database of customers that it can use to promote specials. For instance, two weeks ago, it obtained a lot of Wedgewood china in a particular pattern that it had stocked previously. Using the e-mail database that CoreSense allowed it to create, Down East was able to move the lot with e-mails targeted to previous buyers of the pattern. The e-mail resulted in a tenfold sales increase of the pattern within a week, with the first orders coming in within three hours of when the company sent the promotion. “We would not have been able to do this before,” Edwards says. “We were really pleased.”