IrishWear.net


IrishWear.net is an online retailer of marine and outdoor products such as sailing boots and shoes, selling Dubarry of Ireland and Sebago Inc products.  

Best practice in: 	Broadband
Sector:			Retail
Size of firm:		4 employees
Location:		      Northern Ireland
Website:		www.irishwear.net

	


Objectives: 

Paul and Pauline Vallance set up IrishWear.net four years ago, following discussions with Dubarry, when they discovered that they could not buy the products online.  They have since added Sebago Inc to their range of products and have plans to add other leading retailers in the future to become an online superstore for sailing shoes and boots.

Before introducing broadband to their business, they had a 56K dial-up Internet connection.  Their main objective in choosing to get a broadband connection was to realise the benefits it would bring them by enabling them to manage their website more effectively and by increasing the efficiency of their operations to maximise the amount of business their small team could handle.



Solution: 

The company now has an ADSL connection provided by BT Openworld.  They have developed their own in-house software for back office functions such as software for recording customer details, generating address labels, invoices, statistics and internal management reports.  


Results: 

The benefits of broadband have been recognised throughout the company's operations from improvements in customer service through to increased internal operating efficiencies.  

The centre of IrishWear's business is its website.  This is the shop window of the business and the ability to keep this up-to-date is therefore of prime importance.  As well as regular web site updates for new products and other details, IrishWear is now on the fourth version of its website (much like changing your shop window in a 'bricks and mortar' business) and the fifth is currently in development. The uploading of content is a major task.  "We need to be able to upload content quickly and easily," says Paul.  "This was very difficult with a 56K modem and apart from taking up a lot of our time, meant that the website may go off-line if we became disconnected for any reason."

Irishwear have been able to provide considerable enhancements to their web site, such as the ability of customers to track the progress of their orders in real-time.   A recent addition to the site is "on-line" chat for customers.  "This has proved to be a very useful added value tool to both IrishWear and customers alike and has helped sales and customer service."

They have also created a system whereby agents selling on commission can check what business they have generated and the commissions owed to them.  The level of service that they are able to provide has been made possible by linking the website with their back office administration systems. "We need to be online to do this.  Broadband reduces the time and cost involved in this and it would not be viable using our previous dial-up connection." 

Improved response time to customer emails is also important.  "We are now able to respond very quickly to emails from customers.  We are usually able to respond within 15 to 30 minutes."   An additional service now provided by IrishWear for their customers is "Newsline", a monthly email providing details of new products and special offers.  "We have developed software that enables 5,000 emails to be sent in 5 minutes.  We are able to track these in real-time to monitor how many are opened and how many are bounced back.  We couldn't possibly contemplate a connection with customers on that level without broadband.  It just would not happen."

As well as cost advantages of broadband over the use of a 56K modem, Paul notes the benefit of being able to use the telephone lines for voice communication also.  "We do not now need to worry about having additional separate lines for voice communication.  As a result we now also provide a telephone mail order service.  As a small business it is an important advantage not to need to have additional lines."


Challenges: 

A challenge that IrishWear shares with all on-line retailers is that of making potential customers aware of their business and attracting them to their website.  In order to ensure that Internet users searching for Dubarry products find IrishWear high on their search engine lists, IrishWear spends a lot of time registering with numerous search engines on a regular basis.  This takes up a considerable amount of their time on a daily basis. "This is very difficult and costly to do without broadband.  Also as a result of broadband we have been able to develop this into a service that we provide for other companies.  It has enabled us to develop an additional business service which is a profit centre in its own right."


The last word:

Broadband has enabled IrishWear to improve customer service and gain major internal operating efficiencies.  "Broadband has transformed our business," says Paul.  "Once you have direct access which is uninterrupted and fast, it is a completely different world."