Recipes for Growth
As seen in
How two Multi-Channel Marketers Tackle Back-End Web Order Fulfillment
by Amanda Feingold
Overlooking the beautiful scenic river and the maritime museum in downtown Manitowoc, WI, Cook's Corner, the largest kitchen store in the United States, lies on 20,000 square feet of land. Customers sit in the store café sipping lattés and gourmet coffee as they gaze outside at the World War II submarine docked in the river. In addition to relaxing with coffee and dessert, customers also can choose from thousands of kitchen items and spend all day looking at the store's 135-foot gadget wall, covered with orange peelers, cork screws and everything in between.
Meanwhile, in Westerville, OH, the folks at Cheryl & Co. are baking away: preparing cookies, cakes and brownies to supply their nine retail stores, catalog division and business gift services division.
Both companies started as traditional catalogers with all retail stores, and have grown into multi-million dollar operations—largely due to the almighty Internet. The road to a multi-channel business can be complicated. There's software, Web sites and e-commerce to decipher. For these catalogers, a Web-based order fulfillment system has smoothed some of the pavement.
Cook's Corner (www.cookscorner.com)
In 1974, Cook's Corner began as a small factory outlet store, exclusively offering seconds, overruns and discontinued cookware from Mirro Foley company. By 1984, the size of Cook's Corner had doubled. It began handling orders and replacement parts for Mirro cookware. The company continued growing rapidly, and in 1993 dropped its first catalog to 100,000 prospects. By 1996, Cook's Corner was offering more than 50 lines of household products and handling more than 30,000 product request letters a year.
In December 1998, the company decided to launch a Web site to facilitate expansion. Cook's Corner Owner Peter Burback says going online was a natural progression.
"We have a perfect type of product for the Internet because it's easy to shop," he says. "We have brand names like Krups coffee makers and Kitchen Aid mixers, and it's not like clothing where you have to try it on. Krups is a good quality product, and it's a real easy purchase on the Internet."
Once the retail and mail order outlets became a success, Burback started attending retail and houseware shows, where software companies were displaying their services. This is where Cook's Corner became involved with Dydacomp, a mail order entry software company that caters to small- to medium-size catalogs.
Burback decided Totowa, NJ-based Dydacomp was the best company to handle the shipping and ordering part of the business. He started using Dydacomp's Mail Order Manager (MOM), which runs all back-end operations, including customer maintenance, inventory, pricing levels and packaging to name a few.
Expanding Business
When Cook's Corner decided to go online, it simply installed SiteLINK, an add-on to the MOM program that provides the Web interface and ties it to the cataloger's existing MOM system.
"The program we use from Dydacomp matches our entire business, from retail to mail order to the Internet, which is a really nice system," say's Burback.
Internet Operations Manager Nancy Leigh adds that Cook's Corner did not have to research anything or worry about integrating its channels. "Our software basically did [the integration] for us," she explains. Leigh says Cook's Corner plugged in the SiteLINK software and was up and running online in a few minutes.
SiteLINK is not a technical program. Anyone who understands their business can use it, explains Rob Coon, sales manager and director of marketing at Dydacomp. Basically, if a company already is using MOM to handle its catalog and retail operations, then it just uses SiteLINK to build the Web site. Together, SiteLINK and MOM feed and support both the catalog and Web business, explains Coon.
Users can either allow SiteLINK to pull the SKUs on the back-end from MOM, or if they choose, they can type in new data and insert different copy and photos for their online store. MOM walks users through the set up process, and then moves the data into a Web store environment.
As for Web design, Leigh and Dydacomp do it together. Leigh chooses a design template from Dydacomp, and then she inserts Cook's Corner's own pictures and item descriptions.
Internet Bolsters Business
"The catalog's kind of the catalyst for our Internet sales, "Burback says. "We feature our Internet [address] on the front page of our catalog. I think that drives our Internet sales as well as our retail sales."
Burback says since launching the Web site, Cook's Corner has quite a bit more volume. "We're shipping hundreds of thousands of packages a year now," he says. "We've gone from a 3,000-square-foot building to a 20,000-square-foot building."
Half of the square footage is the retail store, and the other half is the shipping department.
Before the company went online, workers hand picked items off the sales floor because the retail store and warehouse have always been in the same building.
This system worked fine when the business was small, but a new system was needed. As a result, Cook's Corner will acquire an additional 20,000-square-foot warehouse in 2001. Burback says that catalog, retail and Internet order fulfillment will all come from this warehouse.
Cheryl & Co.
In 1981, armed with a cookie recipe passed down from her grandmother, Cheryl Krueger-Horn started Cheryl's Cookies. It started as a small retail shop in Columbus, OH, selling cookies in a mall.
The catalog for Cheryl's Cookies broke out in 1987. By 1988, the company expanded its product line to include a wider range of baked goods and specialty gift items that led to the name Cheryl & Co.
Growth continued, and in 1989, Cheryl & Co. branched out into business gift services. After several years of growth, it added a food services division, supplying restaurants and airlines with desserts in 1992.
Falling Back on Web Ordering
In 1998, the company went online, but its Web site started out as purely informational. Web ordering was not an option.
Web ordering came about by way of disaster. When the company's phone system crashed, a group of programmers and designers wrote some basic code to enable the site to take web orders so customers would not be left out in the cold. The system was up and running in 24 hours.
After that, it took about four months to re-write the code and get more in-depth with the Web ordering system. The company did not purchase any software. The code is all home-grown and integrated into one fulfillment system.
"The Web-based ordering system was custom designed by an outside consultant," says Jennifer Pearce, director of marketing at Cheryl & Co. "There are literally thousands of [lines of] code—all cherylandco.com site specific.
Internet Sales Manager Christine Riner adds that writing code is a continuous process, because the company is always adding features to its Web site. Soon customers will be able to use gift certificates online. The wholesale business for restaurants and airlines is treated as a separate division, so Cheryl & Co. does not take bulk orders online. The Web is for consumer retail only.
Pearce explains that no matter what channel a customer orders from, all orders go to the same call center. There is no difference to the customer on the front end. Because the system is integrated, there has been no change on the back end either, except that the company is busier, she says.
"Overall, we have expanded our fulfillment operations and its square footage as the business continues to grow," says Pearce. "Fulfillment for catalog, mail, Internet and fax orders are handled in the same production areas."
The design of the Cheryl & Co. Web site is a process that keeps evolving. For instance, customers cannot yet track orders online. But, Pearce says the company listens to customer feedback, and makes changes and additions accordingly.
Cheryl & Co. has nine retail stores in Ohio and mails catalogs all over the country. All of this has grown out of grandmother's cookie recipe.
"We have definitely seen an increase in our Internet sales over the past two years, and expect them to continue to grow," says Pearce. "We view the Internet as one more sales channel for us."
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