News

Shopatron sees 15% growth in second quarter

July 28, 2010

San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based Shopatron has announced that second quarter same-stores sales have increased by an average of 15 percent across all client stores compared to the same period last year. Shopatron provides e-commerce for branded manufacturers in more than 35 industries, representing more than 800 brands. The comparison was based on all client stores active for at least one year on Shopatron.

With Shopatron's solution for branded manufacturers, Coex Freedom, brands sell on their website and send those orders to their retail partners for fulfillment. This solution eliminates channel conflict, builds retailer relationships, grows distribution and increases overall sales for the brand. Shopatron’s solution for multi-channel retailers, Coex Private, allows retailers to fulfill orders from all inventory centers, including both retail stores and distribution centers. Shopatron's distributed order management model also enables in-store pickup and ship-to-store capabilities that drive traffic into brick-and-mortar locations for additional services and add-on sales.

The company also announced that several industries outperformed the average. Not surprisingly, as the weather warmed up so did sales in many "summer" industries. Led by Louis Garneau, Cane Creek and Cycling Sporting Group, online stores in the cycling industry experienced an incredible 49 percent growth over last year. And outdoor sporting goods sales increased by an average of 27 percent, led by brands such as Johnson Outdoors, Thule and PSE.

The pet and equine stores on Shopatron, which saw strong growth in Q1, saw that growth continue in Q2 with a 27 percent increase in sales across the industry. Music also had a very strong showing with a 27 percent increase, led by Mel Bay, JL Audio and Ernie Ball. Other strong industries included apparel, with a 29 percent increase, the juvenile industry at 20 percent and home furnishings showing a 19 percent increase.

Although Shopatron attributes some of the growth to a general increase in consumer spending, many of the most successful industries have not traditionally sold products online. By integrating dealers as fulfillment partners, a core component of the Shopatron eCommerce platform, branded manufacturers in all industries are able to sell online and provide in-store pickup of those orders.

"We use Shopatron to not only sell our standard products, like guitar strings, online but to sell and deliver custom guitars to our customers through our authorized dealers," said Scott Ball, sales manager at Music Man (Ernie Ball). "The recent growth of our e-commerce sales, along with the positive comments from happy dealer-partners confirms that we are doing e-commerce the right way."