Case Studies - Big Sky Branding

Uniform & Company Stores  |  Big Sky Branding  |  Multiple Stores / Shared Administration

Opportunity & Challenge

In 2008, Big Sky Branding was hosting 7 company stores on 4 different platforms. One of those sites, navyalumnistores.com, moved to the Speartek retail ecommerce platform to see how well the Speartek system would work for the client. The success of that project and the need for a single system to manage all of the stores from a shared administration tool led Big Sky to engage Speartek once again. This time, Speartek would transition all 6 remaining sites to a unified platform. The challenge was that all the stores had unique rules for product access, payments, and pricing. Additionally, none of the companies used related branding, so each site would be a unique undertaking, tied together under a central management platform.

Strategy

Because the transition of the sites did not represent the direct revenue increase typically associated with a new company store, the goal was to minimize the overall transfer cost. To do so, Speartek developed a unified template program to offer consistency across the sites, while providing flexibility to change color palettes and maximize client branding. Additionally, Big Sky handled much of the data entry and transferring tasks, further reducing costs for the project.

Solution

A master database was built to enable Big Sky to login to one location and manage all of their sites. Content, products, and order data can be viewed together, or filtered by store. The presentation of each site is unique, giving each store’s customers a personalized ordering interface for their shopping experience. The rules for product access, pricing, and payment methods are unique to each shop, and in many cases, to user groups within each shop.

Continued Success

The first of the six new sites launched in February 2009, with an additional shop launch each month. With all the sites located under one system, Big Sky has a unified console from which to manage all of their brands, content and stores. Future plans include integrating online orders to Shopworx, a product management solution used by Big Sky for inventory control and order processing. Automating the ordering and fulfillment process will further reduce workload and cut costs for Big Sky.

Fast Facts

• Template program built to allow efficient replication while maintaining unique branding per client
• “Master” database contain data for multiple shops in one location
• Product display, pricing and payments are configured uniquely for each store and user group
• Multi-shop management provides efficient management of content, products and orders
• Planned Shopworx integration will save time and money for client