> Gift Giving and Getting Gets Easier
February 2004
Gift giving can be gut wrenching. So can gift receiving — as in "Which one of your relatives gave us the ugly cuckoo clock?"
That’s why many people prefer to buy from gift registries set up by recipients listing specific items they’d like to get.
Actually, gift registries have been around for years and years. But MarCole Enterprises, Inc., pioneered in putting them online so that both setting up a registry and purchasing from it can be done with keystrokes on a PC or by using a touch screen at a store kiosk.
MarCole was the first to incorporate high quality digital product images with gift registry applications — making it easy to register and purchase special order items. The registry system offers on demand access from wherever the gift buyer may be.
Why On Demand
Sur La Table, a retailer of top quality cookware and kitchen accessories, was eager to make it easier for people to create gift registry wish lists from which their family and friends could purchase items.
Key Benefits
MarCole Enterprises delivered its Gift RegistryWorks so that Sur La Table customers can readily create a wish list that’s accessible via a Web site or instore kiosks using IBM PCs powered by WebSphere® Express.
Doing Business with IBM from the Start
But we’re getting ahead of the story.
Thirteen years ago, when MarCole Enterprises went into business as an Independent Software Vendor (ISV), it made three strategic decisions. The company set out to:
Create a niche market by providing turnkey gift registries for retail operations
Develop all its solutions on open architectures
Become an IBM Business Partner
All three decisions proved to be wise because today MarCole is the undisputed leader in providing software packages to launch and maintain in-store and online gift registries. Over the years its worldwide customer base has spanned from A (Apex Department Stores) to Z (Z Gallerie).
The truth is, retailers don’t just depend on MarCole’s gift registry applications. The company also provides interactive, multimedia solutions that seamlessly integrate all kinds of retail activity — not least of which are branding, electronic cataloging, credit card authorization and customer service.
Value of Scalable Systems in the SMB Market
"Customer size doesn’t matter to us," says David Pava, MarCole Vice President for sales, "because we deliver scalable solutions that are suitable for a single store or a worldwide chain." "Sure, we’re proud to do business with the likes of Linens ’N Things, Neiman Marcus and Sur La Table, but we also sell to mom-and-pop retailers."
When asked how MarCole works with IBM, Pava’s quick response is: "Any way we can."
He goes on to explain, "We resell IBM hardware and middleware. We develop our solutions on Linux, WebSphere, DB2 and Java, and we run on all servers of the IBM family. Each of our products is e-business enabled, and we’re proud to feature the IBM Business Partner logo on our product literature."
Pava says MarCole "chose IBM over Microsoft for our solutions because our client retailers’ environments are diverse, and we strongly believe in open systems."
MarCole is a member of IBM’s ISV Advantage Initiative, a program that provides ISV’s with technical and marketing support to help meet the needs of small and medium business (SMB) companies. The SMB market is growing faster than the overall IT market.
Sur La Table Increases Sales Outside Its Stores
Case in point, consider one of MarCole’s customers, Sur La Table. It’s a Seattle-based retailer of top quality cookware and hard-to-find kitchen tools that caters to novice cooks and professional chefs alike. Sur La Table started small in the 1970s but in recent years has grown into a national chain. At the end of 2003, Sur La Table owned 38 stores and plans to open as many as 15 more by yearend 2004.
One facet of Sur La Table's success is selling outside its retail stores. In 1988, the company issued its first black-and-white catalog and in 1999 launched its online Web site. In 2001, the retailer added an on-line gift registry based on MarCole's software package called Gift RegistryWorks.
Gift RegistryWorks lets a person create and update a wish list that's simple for friends or relatives to access. They can use it to shop online, by catalog or at Sur La Table stores in 16 states and the District of Columbia. If they visit one of the stores, they can make selections from a touch screen on a kiosk using IBM PCs powered by WebSphere Express.
And "wish list" is the right term to describe what Sur La Table sells. At last count, the chain offers more than 12,000 items from 1,600-plus suppliers around the globe.
Making It Easier for Customers to Choose
As Michelle Haycox of Sur La Table’s In-Store Operations puts it, "Our competitors often try to slim down their inventories and, in effect, make many negative choices for the customer by not stocking a lot of useful merchandise. Sur La Table offers a much wider selection of inventory, providing our customers with the ability to choose the best products to fit their individual lifestyles."
Everyone comes out ahead. People giving gifts can order them, choose the wrapping and have them shipped without ever leaving home; recipients get what they really want. In short, the gift registry takes the guesswork— and the gut wrench — out of gift giving and getting.
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