Yahoo! Merchant Solutions

Case Study

BackgroundHow does a retailer with zero computer experience go from a small local shop to a multimillion dollar online store in three short years? For Debra Clark of Allure Furniture Designs, the answer was Yahoo! Merchant Solutions.

In 2004, Debra had a retail home furnishings business. While the business was successful, sales were limited only to local customers. Debra saw how online sales could drive business growth and widen her reach significantly, but she lacked the tools and knowledge to go about building an online store. “I didn’t know anything about the Internet,” recalls Debra. “I didn’t even use email at the time.”

Business challengeDebra’s business challenge was to build an online store that could extend the company’s reach beyond her single retail location, and multiply her sales.

The answer: Yahoo! Merchant SolutionsDebra’s search started (and ended!) with Yahoo! Merchant Solutions because she recognized and trusted the Yahoo! brand, and Yahoo! Merchant Solutions sounded very simple.

“Yahoo! made it very easy to build a web site with no computer knowl-edge,” says Debra. “It has all the tools – reports, order processing.”

Initially Debra managed her brick-and-mortar business and five employees by day, and built AllureFurnitureDesigns.com at night. With Yahoo! Merchant Solutions’ search engine–friendly web pages and easy access to online advertising tools like Yahoo! Sponsored Search, Debra was able to drive traffic to her online store and start growing sales.

As the online sales took off, Debra’s Web operation was soon generating more revenue than her brick-and-mortar store. Soon, she decided to cut her retail overhead and focus exclusively on online sales

Success storySince she chose Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, Debra’s business has grown to include eight employees, merchandise from over 75 vendors, and over 10,000 individual items for sale. And how much space does she need for this huge operation? Just one office.

All Debra’s products are delivered directly from the manufacturers via white-glove shipping services, so there’s no need for a warehouse orother storage overhead.

Furniture Retailer Discovers the Allure of Online Sales

Business NameAllure Furniture Designs

www.AllureFurnitureDesigns.com

OwnerDebra Clark

Business Snapshot

Business ChallengeTo grow sales beyond a physical location by expanding the business online

SolutionYahoo! Merchant Solutions

ResultsQuickly grew sales

Reduced overhead

Increased customer satisfaction

Online furniture retailer

Yahoo! Merchant since: 2004

Number of products: 10,000 SKUs from 75+ vendors

Employees: 8

Location: Pasadena, CA

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And with unlimited “floor space” in her online store, Allure Furniture Designs can display as many prod-ucts as Debra’s customers demand. Now, sales keep growing!

Using Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, Allure Furniture Designs employees can easily print, email, track, and fax orders to their 75 vendors. They can also process the occasional return, which goes with the territory when shipping large furniture.

Debra’s online sales success has “way overreached my expecta-tions from thinking it might be a several-thousand-dollar business to being a multimillion-dollar business.” At times, Debra has seen sales increase as much as 200% to 400% per month.

Today, Debra is able to reach demographics she couldn’t touch from her Southern California retail location, with 70% of her customers now coming from the East Coast.

How did Yahoo! help? Simplicity – “I love Yahoo! because they’ve simpli-fied things dramatically,” says Debra. Even though this was her first time building an online store, Debra found it easy and intuitive to build one that was stylish and attractive. After attaining a high degree of success on her own, Debra hired an outside designer to enhance her site design. She easily integrated the designer’s work into her own layout and continued to maintain control of the overall look and feel with Yahoo! Merchant Solutions.

Efficiency – Debra continues to maintain her web site in-house, with her own staff. From site design to updating content to processing orders, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions is “so simple that anybody in this office can put a product online in minutes using the Yahoo! platform,” says Debra.

“Changing pricing, updating, additions [to the site] – it’s all very, very simple. The reports make it very simple for accounting, taxes, and everything. It’s like one big package.”

Effective marketing – Because Debra was able to add tracking codes to her store to measure her online marketing effectiveness, she knew

which online ads and keywords from her Yahoo! Sponsored Search listings worked best for her business. With that information, Debra was able to make the most of her limited marketing budget.

Yahoo!’s integrated platform also introduced Debra to new marketing tactics such as Campaigner by GOT for email marketing, and Yahoo! Merchant Solutions’ cross-sell platform to recommend related merchandise and increase her average order size.

Fraud protection – “Yahoo! has tools to help reduce credit card fraud. Yahoo! actually flags orders if credit card codes don’t match.” Debra gains peace of mind from using this tool to help identify and prevent potentially fraudulent transac-tions.

I love Yahoo! because they’ve simplified things dramatically.” Debra Clark - Allure Furniture Designs

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Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Case Study

Furniture Retailer Discovers the Allure of Online Sales

Step by step wizards allow you to easily set up your online store

I had absolutely no clue it would grow this fast!” Debra Clark - Allure Furniture Designs

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Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Case Study

Furniture Retailer Discovers the Allure of Online Sales

Customer satisfaction – Customers routinely comment on the quality of Debra’s site design, and the way it reinforces her business’s credibility. She’s also received feedback that her store is easy to navigate and it’s easy to find merchandise in it, which increases the likelihood that customers will return for future purchases.

SummaryThanks to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, Debra Clark was able to build AllureFurnitureDesigns.com with no prior technical experience, and has since turned her online store into a highly successful e-commerce business. Today she recommends Yahoo! Merchant Solutions to friends who are starting out in online sales, and has watched their success grow as well.

Is Debra satisfied with the solution to her business challenge? Absolutely. After three years on the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions platform, and growth to a multimillion-dollar business, Debra says she couldn’t be happier with the simplicity and power of the Yahoo! platform. Says this satisfied merchant, “I had absolutely no clue it would grow this fast!”

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce

Talk to our sales team: 1.866.781.9246 Mon-Fri 7am-5pm PST