Fawkes Cycles - A fully Managed Service
http://www.fawkes-cycles.co.uk/
Summary
Citrus-Lime developed Fawkes Cycles as a completely managed service. We provided:
- Design and Branding
- The ecommerce platform based on a customised version of Citrus-Store 2.0;
- The order processing and stock control software, based around Microsoft Retail Management System;
- Supply chain integration using our SIM model (Supplier Integration) including new features to provide live supplier stock levels and dynamic image import and resizing;
- Managed services to populate the ecommerce database, blogging and fully managed content management;
- Marketing and on-going promotions
- On-going management of product entry, order processing and customer service handling.
By taking this approach we've been able to provide the Fawkes Cycles management team with a cost effective and quick method of bringing the Fawkes Cycles brand into the market place.
Partnership with Citrus-Lime
The client was already (and is - ) operating a successful, independent cycle shop but felt that there was an opportunity for the business to broaden and expand into a (quote) “less focussed, niche-y marketplace” without losing the principles of great product, value and customer service that is applied to the current bricks-and-mortar environment.
There were a few initial challenges.
Creation of the Brand
First, the project was only referred to as the ‘Cycle Project’ for the first few meetings. OK, so an identity needed creating.
Second, every square inch of the current bricks-and-mortar location was dedicated to product and workshop space for the existing business and that wasn’t going to change any time soon. In the virtual world, space is a relatively easy thing to come by. Not so simple in the real world. An interesting challenge ... how would ‘Cycle Project’ offer 14,000 product lines with enough depth to meet the expected demand?
Let’s return to the first point. ‘Cycle Project’ didn’t really have the ‘zing’ the client was looking for. Whatever identity was created needed to have a few twists to it. It didn’t want to shy away from just how new it was but at the same time it didn’t want to overlook the decades of experience in retail and cycle-retail that the client was bringing to the project. So that’s expressing BRAND NEW and EXPERIENCED.
Also, there was a desire for the name to be a little rebellious. Mountain Biking can be like that, you see. From personal experience, it does feel a little rebellious when you’re 30-something years old, sat on your carbon-steed in clothes you’ve spent hard-earned money on that are caked in what used to be countryside and you’re staring at a downhill you know could lead to a doctor’s note being handed in on Monday.
A few ideas did the rounds but something about “Fawkes” just had appeal. The Guy Fawkes link ticked the rebellious box. When you say it out loud, it sounds like “Forks” – a key ingredient in any bike. It has implied history but visually it presents itself, graphically speaking, in a contemporary way. FAWKES. Lots of sharp angles like the switchbacks on a tricky descent.
(It also has a pretty obvious, built-in promotional opportunity every year.)
Sold.
So that was the first challenge overcome.
Managing the Ecommerce Site and Stock
The second was how to provide a vast array of products without necessarily having to hold the stock, whilst still being able to present a stock position to the customer that was valid. Stock virtualisation normally means that the online shopper won’t have stock information available to them. In other words, you place your order and hope that the item is in stock. This is because, unless you are one of the really big players in the cycle market, the retailer places the order when your order is received. The time in between one action and the other means that your order is at risk of being put on back order.
The decision was taken to integrate the stock position with the supplier and keep it as close to real-time as possible. We also agreed that back-ordering was not an option as it is difficult and time-consuming to manage. So if Fawkes says it is available to buy, 99.1%* of the time it is sure to be with the customer within the time frame committed to.
* Current statistics from Fawkes “100% order fulfilment” analysis.
Another critical factor in calling the project a success was the efficiency of product management for the ecommerce administrator.
Two of the most challenging tasks when setting up a product file are producing descriptions and images. With descriptions, thinking about what to say about a product can be difficult. With images, having access to source photography from suppliers can be a major hurdle and then you need to organise, format and optimise them for use online, too.
Recognising that this was a significantly time consuming task and so not really fitting in with the Speed and Efficiency prerequisite of the project, a custom service and two new features were developed for the project by the Citrus-Lime Development Team.
- With regards to descriptions, we would expand our Supplier Integration Module to extract the product descriptions available on the Madison B2B website and associate them with the product records created in the ecommerce platform. This would happen automatically so that when Madison B2B added new products, the Fawkes ecommerce engine would not only get the commercial information of the new item but also the short and long description, too.
- Once the images were sourced, a new feature included by the Citrus-Lime Development Team would allow images of any size and dimension to be formatted to a consistent size and quality; this would happen ‘on-the-fly’ – meaning that it happened without the site administrator having to open their image editing software at all.
The ‘custom service’ was provided to actually get the images to the ecommerce database in the first place. Not only that, but each image acquired from the Madison B2B website would be correctly associated with the appropriate product record. This task could not be entirely automated – yet – but this process, coupled with the automatic image-formatting feature, saves so much valuable time that it has allowed the project to be available with a launch day product count of 500 (this with only 2 weeks of actual pre-launch ‘hands on’ time for the ecommerce administrator). Active Product figures have now grown to 1500 and continue to rise.
Rounding off the features, the Courier Integration Module enables a highly efficient pick-and-pack routine and, to the customer, that means a consistent level of service so they can order with confidence time and again.
Marketing
Daily feeds to Google Shopping and other Price Comparison Services open new channels for sales opportunities. A highly targeted Pay Per Click campaign and a feed in to Amazon adds to these opportunities.
The actual ecommerce site takes advantage of almost all the features aimed at improving product awareness and buyer confidence. This includes peer reviews on products, blogging, social networking and video integration all go some way to ensuring that a positive experience has been delivered.
This project has been a very interesting experience for Citrus-Lime. Our usual calling is to build a site that reinforces the core values of a clients’ brand and to establish multi-channel opportunities. Here, the focus has been very much on creating a brand with which customers would be instantly comfortable without the benefit of a high-street chain store or well-known independent shop to tie in to it.
We have also been excited to see how it would be received and, in the short period of time the project has been transactional (Nov’09 – Jan’10), the signs all point to this being a highly desirable business model and one well worth talking to Citrus-Lime about.
http://www.fawkes-cycles.co.uk/
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