Blarney
Stone Enterprises
4
. Outcome
The
success of Blarney Stone’s adventure into ecommerce and especially
their diversification into buyfromireland.com, would not have been
possible without the generous assistance given by Enterprise Ireland.
Using moneys from the Accelerator Fund, Blarney Stone were able to
plan, manage and build their web sites. “I truly believe that
the company wouldn’t be existence today if we hadn’t received
this funding,” remarked Declan, “It might not seem like
a whole lot of money, but if you’re an SME and receive a grant
in preference to a loan, it makes your bank
manager very user friendly”. The financial aid broke the back
of what would have been a pretty horrendous up-front cost for Blarney
Stone. In addition, their bank was more willing to lend additional
funds to finalise the project. In conjunction with the involvement
of Enterprise Ireland, the process of applying for funding proved
invaluable in streamlining the company’s ecommerce initiatives.
“Funding required all aspects of our business to be documented
and presented to Enterprise Ireland – a procedure that added
a high degree of discipline to the process. It allowed us to really
streamline our business practice,” commented Declan. With a grant
of IR£77,000, Blarney Stone were able to launch a site that
now sells more Irish goods than any other site in the world.
5 . Lessons Learned and Advice for Other Companies
Declan Fearon has now amassed a great deal of experience in the
development, launch and promotion of commercial web sites. Now working,
in his spare time, as a consultant advising others of both the pitfalls
and smoothest routes to launching similar initiatives, he advises:
- only
sell products to an existing customer base, don’t try and
create a market - use one that is already thriving. Otherwise,
before you make any sales, your marketing costs will escalate.
Many companies have an insufficient depth in their product ranges
to attract a global audience. If it is not a known brand you already
have your work cut out
-
the value of the orders should be such that the margins make sense
when considering site maintenance and shipping costs
-
the item should not be an enormous object of low value where the
cost of making and shipping it won’t provide an adequate
return
-
the product should be robust enough to withstand transportation,
because if it can break, it will break
- ensure
the availability is there, customers don’t want to wait six
weeks to take delivery of goods ordered on the Internet
- if
you do have a limited customer base and a small product range,
it is worth considering using another Internet channel to sell
your products, rather than investing in money to build your own
site. Building a fully functional site that operates as a successful
sales tool for your business is a costly and time consuming exercise.
Piggy backing onto an existing popular web store vastly reduces
these overheads. (Note piggy backing will usually involve some
form of revenue sharing scheme, coupled with less freedom to alter
the look of your site)
-
one thing to bear in mind is that a site that doesn’t work
perfectly can be very frustrating for customers. So, if you are
going to build it, build it well and mind it like a child.
Declan
has also noticed the price sensitivity of goods sold on his web
sites, “any promotional offers always get an amazing response,
people love to think they are getting a bargain”. Blarney Stone
Enterprises strives to maintain the dynamic nature of its sites
by continually updating the material. “If the site remains
unchanged for any period of time, interest drops accordingly. We
have to constantly promote new offers, detail new products and offer
discounts to avoid interest waning”, he warns.
Moving from a strictly retail sales model to an expansion via the
Internet can be a bumpy ride. There is a fine balance to be struck
when starting to promote products on your own online store. Retailers
can often feel like their markets are being jeopardised and companies
would be wise to avoid the predicament of going into competition
with their own retail network.
The value of placating retailers has always been a priority for
Blarney Stone. From the conception of the company, retailers have
enjoyed the personal touch along with customers. Long standing relationships
with personnel at retail outlets have been nurtured over a period
of many years and it was important to Blarney Stone to carry this
over once sales volumes increased on their web stores. One way of
achieving this was to detail the location of each retail outlet
on all sites with a feature to automatically highlight the customer’s
nearest store.
6 . Future Plans
Blarney
Stone looks forward to running its two distinct operations namely
the manufacture and sale of its figurines coupled with the supply
of ‘everything Irish’ to the consumer market place. It
has no plans to create more sites than those that exist today, but
to concentrate on greater brand recognition for the Finnians and
buyfromireland.com The company hopes to become more sophisticated
in its use of information technology by finding ways of closely
monitoring sales trends in order to extract more orders. It recognises
that customer loyalty was, and always will be, the most effective
guarantee for return purchasing. Their growth can be attributed
not to what they sell, but how they sell it and, how they maintain
the interest of their customers. Future plans include the introduction
of time critical product offers, such as surprise of the day and
an Internet “happy hour”, where for one hour each day,
customers can enjoy preferential discounts.
Their mission is to capture the largest audience for Irish products
in the world, a feat they are getting close to achieving. In its
first two months, buyfromireland.com had secured 350 individual
orders for goods priced between $75 and $200 with 50% of its customers
from the US and 50% from the rest of the world.
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