Podcast

Learn from Fast Growing 7-8 Figure Online Retailers and eCommerce Experts

EPISODE 110 62 mins

How this Traditional Retail Furniture Brand, Dania Furniture, got OmniChannel Commerce Right



About the guests

Julio Giannotti

Kunle Campbell

Julio Giannotti is a web manager who has been executing digital for Scandis. Scandis is a sub-brand of a Scandinavian minimalist group of companies that has been around since 1963.



SCANDIS is the eCommerce division of Scandinavian Designs and Dania Furniture. The first Scandinavian Designs store opened its doors in San Rafael, California in 1963 to cater to the contemporary home furnishing needs brought on by the huge wave of mid-century modern homes emerging in neighbourhoods throughout the West Coast in the U.S. In keeping with this architectural design movement, stores soon opened across northern and southern California, and later in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota and Illinois.

They made their foray into ecommerce for the very first time earlier in the year, in February and have not looked back since.

I interviewed their web marketing manager – Julio Giannotti and he shared a tonne of insights with me; here’s a summary:

  • why and how they got started with Shopify Plus,
  • their lean ecommerce team,
  • challenges scaling their operations,
  • the SEO marketing and paid acquisition strategy,
  • automation of with Shopify Plus’ Launchpad and Flow apps
  • how they cleverly use their sales reps as affiliates**
  • how physical retail and ecommerce build synergies to driving,
  • even more, sales for their business,
  • how they almost doubled sales across retail branches when they launched their ecommerce site
  • his killer Shopify app recommendations

It’s a value-packed episode.

Watch the Video Interview

Background on Scandis and other sister brands

The original brand was Scandinavian Designs. The founder of the company came from Norway to start the company in California. It is a family business that has been around for over 50 years. They later expanded under the name Dania Furniture which is mainly located in Seattle.

The company carried out a projections analysis of potential sales conversions based on the traffic their non-transactional website was receiving. They realized that they could drive additional sales from the traffic of their sites and that is how Scandis came along. The e-commerce team responsible for launching and running Scandis was made up of Julio, who is the web producer, the V.P of e-commerce and a web merchandiser.

Scandis is a sub-pureplay etail brand that helps them reach customers that live in areas with no physical retail right across the entire span of the United States.

Shopify Plus and why businesses should use it

Julio had initial experience with  Shopify. The Scandis marketing and IT team decided to work with Shopify Plus because they were expecting to deal with a high volume of traffic and transactions across their network of websites. One of the advantages they found working with Shopify Plus was the availability of marketing and productivity apps exclusive to the Plus (enterprise) platform.

Marketing and launching

The team currently does not outsource marketing to agencies or freelancers. Julio had experience with social marketing and knew how to work with a small budget which came in handy at the time. Scandis officially launched in February 2017.

One challenge they had was dealing with customers in areas with no stores on the East Coast such as New York. They installed a geolocation script that redirected visitors to their Scandis website – the pure-play etail store. This enabled them sell furniture to customers across the U.S.

Other than their site, they also sell through other marketplaces like Houzz.

Effective marketing tactics

For you to reach new segments of customers, you need to drive an omnichannel experience. And because the company was used to running in a more traditional retail way, their in-store sales reps felt threatened when the online store was launched. Julio made the associates affiliates by giving them a chance to earn life-long commissions for all customers they referred to the website.

This move made associates more comfortable with the introduction of new tech to the business. It also enabled them to develop creative ways to drive sales since they earned from it. The initially rolled outa beta test of the affiliate program in one store and then gradually rolled it across all stores. They currently have over 200 employees that have been trained on how to become affiliates.

Other forms of marketing

Their key customer acquisition channel is search: both organic SEO and AdWords/Google Shopping.

They also leverage a lot of user-generated reviews. They use Stamped.io where you can import reviews from product pages into Facebook. Retailers can join the Shopify Plus group on Facebook where they will get the chance to learn about the best apps.

Launchpad and Flow

Launchpad is a marketing automation app exclusive to Shopify Plus that launches and schedules sales events, pricing and alerts. Julio says that it provides his team with support over sales campaigns.

Flow is another app exclusive to Shopify Plus, that is used for managing backend tasks such as stock alerts, customer, order and product management.

Killer Apps on Shopify and indispensable tools

Some useful apps for e-commerce businesses are:

Tools Julio finds useful and indispensable are Moz, SEMrush and Flow.

Advice to other retailers

Automation tools save you time that would have been spent doing repetitive tasks. Use automation tools to free up your employees’ time and to allow them to carry out merchandising tasks. Also, do not sacrifice your focus on what works for you. Make time and find ways to make it better.

Timestamps

04.00   Background on Scandis and other sister brands

07.36   Shopify Plus and why businesses should use it

12.36   Marketing and launching

16.31   Effective marketing tactics

28.20   Other forms of marketing

44.10   Launchpad and Flow

49.57   Killer Apps on Shopify

53.20   Advice to other retailers

 

About the host:

Kunle Campbell

An ecommerce advisor to ambitious, agile online retailers and funded ecommerce startups seeking exponentially sales growth through scalable customer acquisition, retention, conversion optimisation, product/market fit optimisation and customer referrals.

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