Social Small Biz Case Study – taking ecommerce forward the lazy way
Web designer and Actinic ecommerce partner, Mark Fraser from Green Jersey Web Design talks to Larry Jarrett-Kerr, marketing multi-tasker with multi-channel clothing brand, Plain Lazy, about how he is pushing the boundaries of his ecommerce website and building the customer base through use of social media and online PR
How would you describe the Plain Lazy brand and products? Who are your typical customers?
Larry Jarrett-Kerr: Plain Lazy is a tongue-in-cheek clothing label and lifestyle brand, appealing to people who don’t take themselves too seriously. We have a growing product range which started originally with T-shirts and other clothing, but has expanded to include skateboards, bean-bags, bedding, greetings cards and more. We sell these online, mail order through our catalogue, in our four shops and through retailers like Free Spirit, Cotswold Outdoor and Blacks.
Our customers typically range from kids to men and women in their twenties. They’re usually involved in active sports like boarding and surfing, or the music scene perhaps, but they all like the Plain Lazy ethos of “work less, play more!”
What’s the history behind the business?
LJK: It was Mark Hagley who started Plain Lazy back in 1993 after he dropped out of university at 19. After only a few months Mark proved that his idea had the potential to be a success by winning “Live wire”, a competition for up and coming entrepreneurs. He toured the whole country persuading independent shops to stock his T-shirts and in 1998 opened the first high street shop. Now we have shops in Newquay, Bath and Brighton and Lewes.
The ecommerce site was first set up in 1999 and initially was a very small fraction of our turnover. But with the swing towards online retailing, the growing strength of fashion sales online and the release of the mail order catalogue in Q4 of 2008, the website is now 20% of our revenue and currently turns over slightly more than our largest store. However, we expect the ecommerce site to start turning over more than all our bricks and mortar stores in the near future.
How important has ecommerce become to your business over that time?
LJK: It’s essential. For a start, our online shop allows us to offer every product in our range in one place – we have more than fifty T-shirt designs alone. And now our customers are used to shopping online, so ecommerce is even more important than ever. Plus it is driving our brand awareness and will become our main sales channel for the entire business in the future.
Which systems and technology are used to operate your ecommerce?
LJK: Plain Lazy’s website is built with Actinic Business ecommerce software which has been heavily customised by Green Jersey. Actinic provides the website’s shopping cart, content management, order processing and despatch.
We also use i-Level’s back office software for stock control across the business.
As well as a sales channel, how does Plain Lazy use the web and online services?
LJK: Plain Lazy’s web store is a little different to a lot of other retailers’ websites because, as a single brand, we need it to serve other purposes as well as making online sales. It has to entertain our customers and let them interact with us, and each other too.
And on the wholesale side, the independent stores who buy from us rely upon the site for product information and brand developments, while our overseas partners use the site to understand who we are and what the brand is about.
How do you use your website to engage with your customers?
LJK: This year we decided to really focus on online PR. We’ve used social media in the past anyway, but we wanted to push it and get our name out there more. We asked online PR specialists, Content & Motion to advise us, and the campaign we call LazyWeb was the first result of this.
Plain Lazy uses social media and online PR to drive sales and brand awareness, to give our customers influence, and to stimulate talk about purchasing in a way that the brand itself doesn’t try to control.
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