FORT WAYNE – Do it Best Corp., a company known for hardware, is turning to software to woo tech-savvy shoppers.
The Fort Wayne cooperative includes more than 4,100 independently owned member hardware and home stores worldwide.
Like many retailing operations, Do it Best wants to reach customers where they are. In March, the company launched a mobile site, m.doitbest.com, designed to work with various smart phones in the U.S.
“What I think a lot of people find handy about it is it’s a hardware store in your pocket,” said Joe Caldwell, Do it Best eCommerce manager.
The mobile site logged about 4,500 unique users, about 10 percent of customers on the company’s e-mail subscriber list, as of June 30. All 65,000 products are listed there, along with a store locator that’s integrated with Google Maps.
“The people who use the mobile site want two things,” Caldwell said. “They want to find a store. They want to find a product.”
Keeping costs down
Mobile sites feature basic layouts designed to be displayed on small screens. They rely heavily on words and menus and less on graphics.
Do it Best’s mobile site allows visitors to access a U.S. map, touch the state they’re in and scroll a list of cities in that state, then scroll a list of locations in that city. Or they can type a ZIP code to find stores.
When users touch an individual store name, they can access a map of its location or dial the store’s telephone number from the mobile site.
Google Maps integrates with the smart phone’s GPS to provide directions.
The mobile site idea sprang from an interest in mobile apps, or software applications, but Do it Best officials didn’t want to invest in developing separate apps for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Droid, Caldwell said.
“It was much more cost-effective to just develop one,” he said.
Despite the savings, one technology expert said Do it Best might have scored a “better” rather than a “best” on this strategy.
Daniel Burrus, Milwaukee speaker, author and CEO of Visionary Apps, applauds Do it Best for embracing e-commerce. He said the co-op should see sales increase.
“But their current methodology could be working against them,” he said.
Companies that develop mobile sites appreciate that the design – created in about one week – can be accessed by all mobile devices, Burrus said. But by choosing that option, the businesses miss the opportunity to leverage smart phones’ various capabilities, including integrating directly with its GPS instead of using Google Maps as an intermediary.
It takes about one month each to develop an app for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Droid, but those apps would work with the phones’ other features and wouldn’t have to be updated for each new generation of the smart phones, Burrus said.
If Do it Best offered apps, consumers’ phones would automatically figure their location and suggest the route to the nearest retail store, he said. Burrus doubts that people who have grown accustomed to that speed of information would have the patience to key in their ZIP code and search for a nearby store.
“They’re developing the way it used to work,” he said. “They’re not going where the consumer is going. It’s short-sighted.”
Overall, Burrus awards Do it Best an A for venturing into e-commerce but maybe a C- for execution.
Caldwell isn’t surprised by the criticism, especially coming from a tech expert. But he points out Do it Best approached the mobile site issue the same way as uberpopular social networking site Facebook did.
“I still think we took the right approach,” he said.
The hardware cooperative hasn’t ruled out developing apps in the future – after company officials learn what features consumers use most and how they use them. The company wants to grow while remaining fiscally responsible.
“It’s just not the right first step,” Caldwell said. “We want to take small steps, to do it incrementally.”
Growing segment
Do it Best is obviously doing something right.
The company’s sales were $2.46 billion in fiscal 2009. The company’s fiscal year runs July 1 to June 30. Do it Best won’t reveal how much of that was from e-commerce, but Caldwell confirmed it was less than 10 percent.
The company’s e-commerce sales have been a bright spot, even during the recession, growing 10 percent to 15 percent each year since 2004.
“We have been the fastest-growing segment of the business,” he said.
E-commerce sales increase when the economy is bad because more people go online to compare prices, he said. Do it Best prices are competitive, Caldwell said.
“I think there’s a common misconception that smaller stores don’t have the same buying power as the big guys,” he said.
By joining together, the cooperative members can qualify for high-volume discounts from suppliers.
Caldwell doesn’t know the company’s market share of online hardware sales but said it’s not where company leaders want to be. Do it Best’s share of the online and brick-and-mortar hardware markets are similar, he said.
The company encourages online shoppers to visit member stores.
Online shoppers can ask for products to be shipped to their homes for a fee, but throughout the checkout process, the site reminds them several times that they can pick up the item free at the nearest store.
Shipping is free to member stores no matter how big or heavy the item is – a big deal for those who shop in smaller, rural stores that don’t stock a full range of large items, Caldwell said.
“If the store doesn’t stock it, (shoppers) can still get it,” spokesman Jeff Benzing said.
Do it Best has about 3,600 total U.S. member stores; 1,650 locations participate in the “Ship to Store” program.
Some have launched their own online shopping site. And others don’t participate in the program because they prefer to order all the items that come to their stores. Those stores encourage customers to place an order through one of the clerks.
In contrast, some stores refer special orders to the website so an employee doesn’t have to do the ordering paperwork, Caldwell said.
Do it Best returns 100 percent of online sales profits to individual member stores if the company can connect a shopper to a specific location. That’s easy when an item is shipped to a store for pickup.
When a shopper has a history of having items shipped to a particular store, that store benefits even if an item gets sent to the consumer’s home.
For shoppers without a shipping history, the site monitors which store locations are viewed during the online shopping process. If the shopper views more than one location, the credit is given to the last store viewed.
The main goal, Caldwell said, is for the corporation’s e-commerce efforts to benefit member stores, not compete with them.
Michael Connolly, who owns four local Connolly’s Do it Best stores, said the company lives up to that philosophy.
“Virtually everything they do is done to support the dealers,” he said.
The mobile site, Connolly said, allows contractors on job sites and homeowners working in their backyards to check whether his store has the items they need in stock.
For items not in stock, consumers can go to the mobile site or just the regular website and order what they want. After the item is shipped, customers can drop in the nearest store and pick up the item without even stopping at the checkout if they’ve already paid online, Connolly said.
“I think it’s worked well,” he said, “for the customers that know about it and use it.”
