eCommerce Consultant: McEwens of Perth Offer Old-Fashioned Quality through Contemporary eCommerce

Building on a rich retail and tailoring history in Scotland, McEwens of Perth are reaching beyond the high street to a larger market with an attractive ecommerce site. eCommerce Consultant takes a look

Posted 14th October 2011

It's not every day we come across a business with as rich and long a history as McEwens of Perth, an independent, family-run Scottish business.

Dating back to its foundation as a tailoring workshop, McEwens began life in the 1860s. Remarkably, the retailer has been trading on the same site in Perth since 1868.

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eCommerce Consultant: Safe Sleep Is a Winner for The Gro Company 

The Gro Company converted an entire nation to using what was once a niche product range.  eCommerce Consultant looks at how they turned an age-old idea into a thriving business

Posted 21st September 2011

The Gro Company began life humbly in 2000 when Managing Director Rob Holmes and his wife started selling Grobag baby sleep bags from spare offices above a nightclub in Kingsbridge in Devon.

The story since then is one of innovation and remarkable achievement. During the last decade the couple established themselves and grew as a company, selling over 3 millions Grobags and, impressively, converting the UK market to a 95% usage of baby sleep bags.

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eCommerce Consultant: A|wear's Site Combines Simplicity with Outstanding eCommerce Functionality

A|wear's business savvy and enduring but fun-loving spirit has seen the Irish retailer survive on the high street for 25 years. Now, an outstanting online shop evidences a promising ecommerce future

Posted 14th September 2011

With UK stores in Bristol, Leicester and Stoke-on-Trent, A|wear has a relatively modest high-street presence outside of Ireland.

So if you're surprised to learn that A|wear's 25th birthday celebrations in Dublin last November occasioned a slew of high-profile tributes from the likes of Cosmopolitan, Company and Look magazines and included a DJ set from MTV presenter Laura Whitmore, there's a lot of history you should know about.  

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eCommerce Consultant: Mailspeed Marine Have the Wind in their Sails

The UK's top mail-order chandler is picking up the pace in its ecommerce operations. Find out why we think they're a business to watch

Posted 8th September 2011

The last few years have not been great for chandlery businesses. The global recession of 2008 and 2009, for example, saw the leisure marine industry as a whole perform worse than average in the already troubled UK economy, with a 6.2% fall in total revenue, and employment across the sector suffering.

But rough trading conditions and stiff competition on- and offline haven't stoppedMailspeed Marine from rising to the top of their game and becoming the UK's largest mail-order chandler.

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eCommerce Consultant: Nakedly Ready for Wine Online

This week eCommerce Consultant is showcasing Naked Wines. As with all our featured enterprises, this online business stands out as a passionate retail innovator

Posted 1st September 2011

Naked Wines show us what an ecommerce company can do. Really. A good online retailing business is one that’s built on the principle that today’s internet empowers a business to try new things and do business in radically new ways. Yes, we’ve had people selling online for quite a while now, but Naked Wines distinguish themselves from those retailers who get an ecommerce site merely to keep up appearances or to cash in on the sector’s growth in order to save their declining in-store trade.

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eCommerce Consultant: Tiso Gives Back to the Mountains

Building on half a century's experience of trading and mountaineering alike, Scottish retailer Tiso offers online customers the full lifestyle package

Posted 12th July 2011

It's not often we come across a business like Tiso.

The company wields a strong half century of mountaineering and in-store trading knowledge and combines it seamlessly into a fantastic, engaging online shop that offers much more to customers that just stock.

Tiso.com offers the whole kit and caboodle in terms of both lifestyle and life-cycle when it comes to mountaineering and everything you need to do it.

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eCommerce Consultant: Euroffice Love You to Love Office Stuff

If you think selling office supplies means providing drab functionality for mediocre spaces in industrial parks, you need to stop thinking like Ricky Gervais' set designer

Posted 1st July 2011

Yes, I did have a favourite pencil case at school. Did you?

Embracing an “inherent love of office stuff,” Euroffice set out with a mission to help people enjoy their stationary.

This mission requires a business that is reliable, flexible and scalable enough to quickly deliver from a huge range of stock (27,000 plus) at reasonable prices, but Euroffice think it also requires attention to detail and a particular understanding for the love of... well, particulars.

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eCommerce Consultant: Figleaves Reveal All Sizes with Respect and Style

On our most recent travels around the ecommerce online marketplace we came across Figleaves. We thought you'd like to know about them.

29th June 2011

Figleaves describe themselves as “the ultimate destination for lingerie, underwear, loungewear, swimwear, nightwear and shapewear – for men and women.”

If that sounds like it translates into a lot of stock, you're right on the mark.

What struck us from a quick browse of the catalogue is how one of the key aims of this business is evidently to cater for quite the broad range of customers: men and women of almost every variety of ages and sizes, giving the business a refreshing sense of openness in a market often characterised by a mainstream/niche divide.

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eCommerce Consultant: History Is on Heal's Side

Building on a rich tapestry of history and tradition, Heal's continues to bring the best of contemporary design through a rich ecommerce and multichannel experience

17th June 2011

Where do we start when discussing a retailer like Heal's? Well, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It's not often we come across a business as old and with such pedigree as this one.

Here is one of the few British businesses with serious in-store heritage and yet continuing to deliver cutting edge contemporary design, both in its ecommere arm and throughout its products.

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BabyBarn Delivers a Positive Blend of Lifestyle, Baby Clothing and Environmental Awareness

Starting out life as a community website for new parents in Jersey, this week's showcase BabyBarn delivers on-trend quality and style

10th June 2011

“Don't think like a retailer,” we heard this week as industry magazine Retail Week drew positive lessons from the meteoric rise of Asos.com. And that's exactly how we feel when that time of the week comes around again and we seek out a site to feature in our Friday E-Commerce Showcase.

Why not think like a retailer? It's not so much about turning one's back on retail as it is about realising that retail is but one facet of a business that functions as an online hub, providing entertainment, engagement and a clear voice for your customers.

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Online Retailer Party Pieces Cater for Young and Old Alike

For this week's E-Commerce Showcase, Party Pieces grabbed our attention with a colourful, engaging site that sells good times to all ages at a decent price

3rd June 2011

When looking for online retailers to include in our Friday E-Commerce Showcase, we always have to strike a certain balance. Yes, we go online and have a good look around for online retailers worth writing about, but to a certain extent we also try to let them do the work.

Those really making a difference in online retail these days are the ones with a clear voice, who speak to their customers on a regular basis, telling them what's going on, through a number of channels.

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Fashion Rocks More Than Just E-Commerce

This week it was an inventive blend of fashion, music, charity and business savvy that grabbed our attention, as we review Fashion Rocks, our Friday E-Commerce Showcase

Posted 27th May 2011

Identifying just what makes this company stand out is a difficult task. Why? Because there so many things. If we were to identify and describe its special qualities we'd basically have to straight-up describe the whole business from top to bottom.

That's because Fashion Rocks is about much more than e-commerce. The stylish British company delivers a unique blend on events, online sales and public service.

Whereas of course, many fashion houses and retailers have drifted towards live publicity events to the extent that they've for a long time been de rigueur, in 2003 Fashion Rocks were able to start with a clean slate and flip that tendency on its head, delivering live events which have been more than just promotions and marketing drives, but also bearing credibility in their own right.

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Online Retail Technology Fails: The Reiss Website Crash

When online retail technology fails in the face of overwhelming, enviable success – is it always a bad thing? Will it soon be a thing of the past?

Posted 26th May 2011

Their website was up and down on Wednesday. What went wrong?

From Reiss's point of view, very little, actually, went wrong. In fact, you could say that everything went so right that their site crashed due to the number of customers hitting it, with a massive, accompanying boost on the high street.

And why? Well, take the Queen, the royal wedding and Obama-mania and wrap them all in one, Tuesday and Wednesday, and you get the picture.

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Online Retailer Alexandalexa's Playful Take on Royal Wedding Fever

This week's online retail showcase, Alexandalexa, grabbed our attention with an inventive tribute to the royal wedding

Posted 20th May 2011

Too often over the past few months we've covered the colder, more clinical side of UK retail: clicks, footfalls, like-for-likes, sectors out-performing one another and all the usual economic indicators we tend to be obsessed with these days.

And we've certainly been guilty of following the herd when it comes to the royal wedding, predicting and analysing its immediate 'flags 'n' booze' effect on UK shoppers and its contribution to better sales in general as the national mood was raised up a couple of notches.

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Online Retailer BrandAlley Reports 'Phenomenal' High Growth

BrandAlley, the French online retailer specialising in private sales and designer goods, has reported staggeringly high UK growth for 2010

Posted 16th May 2011

Founded in Paris in 2005,BrandAlley is France's second largest private sales online retailer. Since 2008 the group has been expanding into the British market with BrandAlley UK, and on Monday published its full-year report for 2010, which detailed staggering growth during the period.

The company appeals to its customers with a dynamic online presence fronted by a stylish site advertising fantastic private sales on designer brands, with as much as 80% off a mixure of up-and-coming and classic clothing, beauty, shoes and homeware brands.

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