In order to expand their reach, Blarney Stone commissioned a group of web designers to build their first web site, which was launched in 1995. That first site promoted the Finnian product range and, importantly, included a facility to buy online. However, it was not without teething troubles as Declan Fearon remembers: “During the first year no sales were received from the site. We discovered that the buy online feature was deficient and when we tried to purchase the function didn’t actually work! That’s how backwards we were then – the site up for a whole year and no one realised it was faulty!”

These problems were subsequently addressed by enlisting the help of another web design firm and, in 1996, the new commercial web site was launched www.blarney-stone.com. This time it worked and worked well.



The main functions of the site were to provide a comprehensive product catalogue so that customers could view each product, and to promote new figurines. Customers could add products to a ‘shopping cart’ before proceeding to the ‘checkout’ to make the purchase. Two new employees were hired specifically to manage the 1,500 weekly emails and fulfil orders.

In order to extend the marketing capabilities of the site, the management and design was outsourced to Dublin’s Solomon Solutions (www.solomon.ie). The resulting new design was far richer in marketing tools and comprehensive in functionality:

• users could now browse through the whole of the immense product range and buy online
• new products were promoted immediately upon availability
• upon log-in, the location of the user would automatically be recognised by the system and all prices and currency would convert to the appropriate local rate
• users were able to partake in chat room discussions with other interested collectors The volume of online purchases has grown steadily too, with 7,500 Finnians bought from the site in 2001(www.finnians.com); the site also generated an additional 6000 enquiries. The other site, www.telltaleteapots.com has also been very busy.
  

Who could have foreseen the blue rinse brigade in chat rooms and on message boards buying, swapping and selling goods? It has been a remarkable achievement to capture the mind-set of this age group, persuade them to take up their mice and join in with the Internet revolution. New products were promoted on a separate section each month to keep the attention and interest of customers.

From the giftware sites, Blarney Stone has managed to build a database of over 36,000 customers. Information detailing, name, age, location and buying behavior has proved an invaluable marketing tool to direct the
company’s business operations:

• statistics detailing the most popular products assists in the design of new figurines and the frequency with which new models are launched
• location data highlights where retail outlets should be concentrated
• age information allowed marketing campaigns to be accurately pitched
• promotions could be tailored to match the buying history of individual customers. The decision to embrace the Internet radically altered the business systems of Blarney Stone in three different ways:
• it provided a channel through which they could sell directly to the customer with margins significantly higher than their traditional distribution networks
• it provided a wonderful way in which to get closer to their customers and provide feedback in order to design what people wanted to buy
• it cut distribution overheads by greatly enhancing their ability to co-ordinate a global fulfillment and distribution network

Blarney Stone had already demonstrated the capability to sell its own manufactured goods online and has an ‘Operational Fulfilment Centre’ to package and ship individual orders. Accordingly, the decision to diversify and sell other suppliers’ goods online seemed like a natural progression.

“Irish goods sold overseas have, in the past, only included small collections with no real depth to their range. After receiving countless enquiries for other Irish goods, such as Celtic Crosses, the company decided to fuel this global appetite for anything Celtic,” reported Declan Fearon, before adding: “We got two buyers from Blarney Woollen Mills. They were amongst the best people in the country, buying for one of the busiest tourist shops in the country. They knew what sold and who supplied it, so they were best positioned to select and manage a range of quality Irish gifts from a group of local suppliers”. Subsequently Blarney Stone opened a buying office in Cork and embarked upon their journey to launch the brand, “Buy From Ireland”(www.buyfromireland.com).



Initially Blarney Stone looked at outsourcing the whole project, from management through to design, hosting, telesales and fulfilment. As each element was explored the costs started to rise dramatically. A telesales centre would have cost IR£400,000 a year with two seats permanently allocated to Blarney Stone’s own products. A fulfilment centre would have cost 10% of turnover. Faced with these daunting numbers, the company concluded that the only way to bring this project to successful fruition would be to do the majority of the work themselves.

Declan and the board took a long look at all their options and, as they had no marketing budget to promote the project, decided they had to house the products on an existing site, already popular in the US market. After searching for the most appropriate channel, the company signed up to a commercial revenue sharing scheme with Nua who ran localireland.com. (A commercial revenue sharing scheme is a common arrangement whereby a percentage of profit from direct Internet sales is taken as commission from the hosting site). Starting life as a community-based publishing project, localireland.com grew and evolved from being a source of high quality, up to date information on Irish culture, tourism and genealogy. In 1998, Eircom, Ireland's largest telecommunications company, invested IR£4 million in the ‘Local Ireland’ project, seeing it as a keystone development in their ambitious ‘Information Age’ project portfolio.

Blarney’s idea was to use the existing traffic on the www.localireland.com site and lure them into the www.buyfromireland.com section. However, Nua had very specific requirements regarding functionality and design for partner sites hosting web catalogues. The deal turned sour when, after spending over IR£50k changing their site to suit Nua’s specific instructions, Nua went into liquidation.

But rather than admit defeat, Blarney embarked upon another course of action – it was decided that this time they would deliver as much of the project as possible themselves. However, they were still short of the required capital required to market the site. Every creative means imaginable would have to be used by Blarney Stone in order to create www.buyfromireland.com. To oversee the project Blarney Stone employed the services of a project manager within Solomon Solutions. The initial role was to set up the servers and databases and subsequently project manage the design process and the roll out of the site. In return Solomon Solutions received equity in the company - their experience in such roles proved invaluable to the project. Specifically Solomon Solutions were able to draw up a plan detailing the site’s requirements and timescales. They managed the development and roll out process on a daily basis – spending time managing details that Declan didn’t personally have time to oversee.