A Ritz-y e-commerce plan
Ritz Camera Centers, with 1,000 brick-and-mortar stores selling camera gear nationwide, is focusing on Christmas. In the next few weeks, the company will have an entirely revamped Web site ready for the holiday buying season.
When online shoppers add items to their shopping baskets at www.ritzcamera.com, the Web site will instantly tell them if the products are out of stock or when they can be expected to ship. Ritz Camera is integrating the Web server for its site with a back-end order-fulfillment system specifically designed to track Internet sales.
"We want the customer to know as much upfront as possible," says Bob O'Hern, director of IS at Ritz Camera. "For real-time availability, we need integration with our back-end systems."
Previously, the Ritz Camera electronic commerce site only captured order information and sent that information to the company's order fulfillment department. "That wasn't very effective, and we've since learned that is not the way to do it," O'Hern says.
This past summer, Ritz Camera installed CommercialWare's Mozart software for tracking customer order and shipment status for Internet sales. Linked into the Ritz Camera e-mail server, Mozart will also help generate e-mail notices to customers about UPS and Federal Express shipments of holiday orders.
In an interesting twist, Ritz Camera has handed over the operation of its Web site to an independent start-up called Phobo.com in Irvine, Calif. For an undisclosed price, Phobo. com acquired the exclusive rights to the ritzcamera.com name and site.
"Phobo.com built the new Web site, and when customers order, they are actually ordering from them," O'Hern says.
Ritz Camera made the decision to give Phobo. com the rights to ritzcamera.com primarily for two reasons. The first reason is that Ritz Camera "realized we don't have the expertise to design, develop and manage electronic commerce as a line of business vs. brick-and-mortar," O'Hern says. The other reason is that as an independent company without brick-and-mortar stores, Phobo.com won't be burdened with charging sales tax for each jurisdiction.
"It has fewer points of nexus," O'Hern says. "Nexus" is a legal term describing a company's physical presence within a state and can obligate the company or customers to pay certain taxes.
Ritz Camera is granting Phobo.com full access to its Internet order-fulfillment system so Phobo. com can present Ritz Camera customers with all the information they need about camera gear as the holiday season approaches.
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