The 1 Year Anniversary of Character Linens (Kids Bedding Specialists) Fight Back Against All-Powerful eBay and Amazon with its Website Launch
With the ever growing power of the large platform seller's eBay and Amazon, a small family run online company fights back. 1 Year on we are proud to grow and make improvements day by day and we won't stop.
- (1888PressRelease) February 19, 2016 - A Decision is Made
January 2016 a special time for the family run Nottinghamshire local business of Character Linens. Only a year prior a bold decision was made to expand their already existent presence on eBay and Amazon into a new web-store of their own. With the ever changing fees and rules imposed by the all-powerful eBay and Amazon it was seen as a necessity to reduce risk in the future, to keep some form of control.
Market Situation Prior to Website Launch
With the ever expanding market share of these conglomerates small online sellers like Character Linens have become puppets to the large channel platform companies' whims, essentially tying the fate of their businesses to a company that can kick them out or change its requirements at any time. Similar situations been common place over recent years with the growth of big business online and in the real world, with examples such as local farmers supplying Tesco having little to no say in the price they sell their product for. It was not until Tesco began to lose market share and profitability that UK farmers were able to band together resulting in Tesco adopting a change of strategy to make positive supplier relations a priority. With the continual growth of Amazon a situation similar to Tesco does not seem forthcoming in the near future, suggesting they will have a vice like grip over all who choose to sell through for some time to come.
What Does Character Linens Do?
Character Linens was left with the decision to stay under complete control or make a change. Such a change was implemented on the 10th of January 2015 with the launch of the e-store www.characterlinens.co.uk. The plan was to have their own independent channel where they could focus on meeting the needs of the end customer instead of focusing on the needs of the big platforms. Without platform charges and control, prices could be made more competitive, independent discounts and promotions could be offered and consumer loyalty to Character Linens could be built instead of consumer loyalty to the big platforms.
What Happened?
A year since launch and Character Linens webstore has flourished, with prices being able to be made significantly lower than the same items they sell on eBay and Amazon, a growing number of online shoppers have been drawn in to the site with their desire to find the best deal. With steady growth throughout the year an ever growing customer base is being developed with repeat custom commonplace suggesting their objective of customer loyalty to themselves not Amazon is so far successful. It was not immediate success however, with constant improvements and changes having to be made. Most prominently page load time was identified as a problem, many shoppers viewing the website left after only a few clicks suggesting they were waiting too long. To combat this a cache optimisation plugin installed and changes to the PHP scripts were used to increase speed by three times. Evidentially this was the correct resolution as an increase in conversions to webstore viewer occurred post change.
The webstore created unforeseen benefits as well, as customers' orders, usually of an individual item 9 out of 10 times when purchased on eBay / Amazonas differentiated from the website where several items would be ordered more often than not. Character Linens have theorised this is due to on Amazon /eBay what the seller has to offer additionally to the item purchased is diluted with other sellers offers, in combination as the optimised categorisation of products on Character Linens website enabling the customer to find what they are looking for but see what else is available in the process. Additionally changes in structure have been made with a special offers page implemented providing the customer with the ability to grab a bargain and an outlet for Character Linens to provide clearance prices on stock with low levels.
What Does the Future Hold?
The main purpose of www.characterLinens.co.uk has already been achieved, to provide a safety net and a method of fighting back against the control of the large platforms monopolisation. Now the family business has set it targets higher with the objective of increasing the sales via the website to reach the levels of that of its eBay and Amazon outlets. How to achieve this though? One such method used is the introduction of new designs of blockbuster movies or kids TV character favourites on the site well before release of the shows/movies themselves, giving the shoppers a reason to visit the site as the items will not yet be available on eBay or Amazon. This can already be seen with the Batman vs Superman blockbuster not due to be released until spring, whereas the bedding sets are already live and selling at Character Linens. This and the constant work by the team on social media engaging with customers and drawing in potential fans is expected to grow the Brand name Character Linens leading to an expected increase in website sales.
Character Linens has started its fight back against monopolisation, and hopes it can inspire other small to medium businesses to do the same.
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