Dubarry Limited

3.4 Selecting and Working with a Supplier

As part of the initial research into the eBusiness opportunity, Dubarry spent some time assessing the supplier market – attending various trade shows, seminars and meeting directly with suppliers in the market. Eventually the company whittled the list down to three companies who pitched for the business.

“What impressed us with the supplier we went with was that they spent a lot of time getting to know us. They were very down to earth, very practical and what really swung it for us was that they came in and got to know our business. It was evident from an early stage that we’d met with someone who understood us. It was also useful in that they were based in Galway so we could meet up regularly – that wasn’t a major issue but it was useful,” says Dubarry’s Head of IT Michael Flynn.

Dubarry eventually opted for Aró (www.aro.ie), based in both Galway and Dublin.

A key issue for the company was that the system when it was eventually built should be capable of being adapted and maintained in house. “One of the things we were absolutely adamant about was that we didn’t want a system delivered to us that would have high maintenance costs afterwards. We didn’t want to become a kind of open chequebook. We wanted a system that was database driven that could be handed over to us and we could put in new products. This is critical to us because our business changes seasonally. It would have been suicidal if we had bought in a fixed model in that every time you wanted to change it would have been a major deal. The inherent structure of the system is relatively fixed but the content is changeable.”

Dubarry also looked at various add-ons, which could be incorporated onto the site – visitor number logs, ticker tapes etc. – but in the end decided to avoid gimmicks and keep the down load time as short as possible for potential visitors.

Once Dubarry had committed to the project and decided on a supplier, the emphasis shifted to making it happen. “One thing we’ve learnt about after all of this, is that project management is absolutely critical. It’s easy for deadlines to shift, again because the project wasn’t necessarily seen as core to the business. But Aró were very strong and managed projects to deadlines. We are also pretty good about project management. We wanted to move forward so they were pushing us and we were pushing them and it was a very healthy relationship” said Flynn.

3.5 The Web Site

The project team at Aró, realised from the outset that Dubarry needed a 'smart' web-based product. They needed it to behave differently depending on who was using it.

They recognised that the nature of Dubarry’s channel relationships was complex with the company making different footwear products and ranges available in different territories. Furthermore attention needed to be given to the fact that Dubarry was keen to respect its relationships with its distributors, a key issue here was whether to make online purchasing available to end users in markets where the company had distributors.


The web site which was eventually created is organised primarily according to geographic region. The first thing a visitor has to do is to identify where they’re from. “A lot of people advised us against that and said you should let people in gently and ask questions later. But we couldn’t fulfil that commitment to our distributors not to sell across their territories if we didn’t ask people up front where they were from. Having said that there’s nothing to stop you not telling us where you’re from but you still can’t buy from a country which already has representation,” explains Walsh. This policy means that the commercial expectations of sales to end users is realistically low. “We don’t believe for a moment that we’re going to sell tens of thousands of shoes through this. A lot of it is referral – it’s to refer genuine enquiries to our existing network. It would be very easy to start trying to sell worldwide but our distributors are the people who support us 365 days a year and if we become opportunistic in terms of wanting to make a killing with double margins on a thousand pair of shoes we won’t have people supporting us.”

Walsh is also cognisant of the fact that footwear is a difficult item to buy online. Where an item of clothing, for example a sweatshirt, might arrive slightly too big or too loose and the consumer would not see that as a major problem, a pair of shoes need to be a perfect fit. “Say you’re a Japanese consumer and you buy shoes on the Internet and they don’t fit, then you have to return them and wait for the next pair to arrive.” However it is a very good mechanism for repeat business.

In the first four weeks of the site going live, Dubarry sold about €6500 worth of goods, which was well within expectations. The previous web site already featured a crude online sales section, whereby consumers used a contact form and credit card numbers were taken manually over the phone. That’s now all available online, including credit card checking.

As regards fulfilment the company was used to supplying product in ones and twos both because of the previous Internet site but also because such a service is offered to retailers around Ireland for the domestic range of footwear. “It’s not a major problem from a warehouse handling point of view,” says Walsh.

While the company has committed to not selling into markets where an existing distributor is in place it is planning to offer specific items, which local distributors aren’t supplying. “If a distributor decides not to stock a product from the collection, we’re not going to deprive someone in Australia, for example, from buying it. This serves two purposes, it motivates the distributor to provide full representation of the range and equally it allows him to go to retailers and let them know that they won’t be listed on the web site as a stockist of a particular item. If the retailer doesn’t stock a product it isn’t listed as a supplier. This hasn’t happened yet but it’s the next step. That’s important to us because it gives us control. It means we know what is happening in distribution. There’s a comfort factor initially for distributors because we’re not cutting across their territory but we will if they don’t perform.”

The business-to-business section of the site is password protected and is available only to the 18 or so distributors of Dubarry. Once into the section each distributor can see their back orders and also the available stock. Ordering is done online and the distributor must indicate the product required, the sizes required, the number and the delivery date. Once an order is completed, a reference number is supplied and an automatic email confirmation is sent. There are several advantages to the new system particularly given the cumbersome nature of the previous one. “Up until recently we were taking a computer print out of our stock availability, shrinking it and faxing it out to our distributors every Friday. But the minute we faxed it, it was out of date because another shoe got pulled off the shelf. So we needed a facility were our distributors could come in and find out exactly what was available,” explains Flynn.

With the online system Dubarry has saved itself a substantial amount of time and hassle in processing distributor orders, largely because the system will not allow distributors to order product when it is not available. “We often found ourselves having to go back and change orders with a distributor because they would ask for a product that wouldn’t even be in production. The system now is capable of blanking out what isn’t available at a particular time.

Not every shoe is available in every size so our system blanks out something that’s not available so they can’t order it. There is a degree of quality control in this.

Pricing is not available on the site because pricing with distributors is unique to each one. Equally because of the credit terms offered to distributors, an online payment system hasn’t yet been included. However an imminent upgrade will include an order tracking facility so that distributors can log on and find out the status of an order already placed.

Selling the system to distributors required some effort. As Walsh points out most are relatively small businesses with their own systems in place and there was a degree of resistance to change. After piloting the project with one distributor to iron out any kinks in the system, Dubarry was relatively insistent that the other distributors shift to the new online ordering model.

“There’s a point at which you have to say, this is it because otherwise it could be twelve months before they get it sorted out. Initially it meant that they have to change their systems. They were less strict with retailers but for distributors it wasn’t a major transition, more of a change of habit. They used to get faxed a fifteen sheet order, sometimes ten of those sheets might be blank. With all their distributors online, the new system saves them time and hassle too.

The final aspect of the site is the brand building it enables Dubarry. “At the end of the day, we have built a brand that now has achieved world wide recognition within a niche that is sailing. We’re finding, and had found in the original site’s configuration, that we were getting a lot of enquiries from places were we didn’t have representation. That used to be the case in the US, for example. The vast majority of our enquiries are coming from the US. What we’re doing now, is we’re forwarding them on to our US distributor who is dealing with them,” says Walsh. Of perhaps greater importance is the interaction it allows with the customer base. “It is not just about selling product, it’s about imparting a lot more information about our products. For example we print quite expensive catalogues but not every consumer who buys a pair of Dubarry shoes is going to get a copy of that. So when someone goes into our web site they’ll get a detailed spec on the performance of the product they have. In addition to that, for example, we have a shoe clinic for looking after the product. Then there’s news and events. We’re involved in the Volvo Ocean race and we let people know what’s going on there and at other events. There’s a racing calendar in it. We’ve linked in with one of the magazines and we’re using their race calendar and every sailing event in the world is in the race calendar.”

He goes on: “What we want to do is build up a database of our customers. We’ve already built up a significant database -- we can categorise people in terms of queries on sponsorship, shoe care, product preference – there’s a whole customer care aspect to this too.”

The site has been live since November 17th 2001. According to Walsh the company could have deliberated for another six months about whether it was ready but the decision was taken to go with as it was. He believes that this was exactly right because even within the first few weeks, a pattern began to emerge from the nature of the queries and the web site is changing accordingly. “For example, people are asking us questions about stuff that is already on the web site which they’re obviously not seeing. That’s great information to get because we know we need to change that.”

“There’s a really significant lesson for anyone wanting to get into this. Once you get a web site up there, it isn’t finished. We’ve decided to allocate three to four hours every week for the next two to three months to review it, to look at the nature of enquiries and see how we can improve the service.”

For visitors outside of Ireland, the emphasis is entirely on the sailing and outdoor ranges. Those without local distributors can buy directly but for the rest the site is primarily a technical sailing/interactive information site with details on where to purchase. Domestic visitors have access to the company’s broader range of footwear. The AV8 and Trix brands are available on the site but these can also be accessed through their own domain names. Like everything else with these brands – packaging and promotion for example – the identities are entirely unique, similar to other teenage brands. As for marketing, the web site address www.DubarryofIreland.com has been incorporated into all promotional material – press releases, product placements, product reviews, ads and swing tickets. There are also linkages from other sites – for example, the Volvo Ocean Race site, which, according to Walsh, is hugely successful, albeit again in the sailing environment.

At the moment, the volume of enquiries to the web site is running at about twenty five to thirty a day. They are almost exclusively from overseas.