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When Hanchy started gathering up products for her e-commerce venture, she drew on her own varied background as well as the interests of her family and friends. Her goal was to put together a collection of gifts that no other store would offer. Her customers would be able to visit one location to find unique, special and one-of-a-kind items. Her first category of items was jewelry. Hanchy found beautiful handcrafted silver earrings, necklaces and bracelets and developed a relationship with a jewelry designer who used American, Indian shapes and markings to decorate her jewelry. Hanchy also added several different styles of silver and gold jewelry from other suppliers primarily in Mexico. About midway through her project, Hanchy designed her own silver and stone earrings and matching necklaces using the Unitarian Universalist symbol of a flaming chalice and had them made by a silver manufacturer. This line of jewelry is very cost effective for her because she doesn’t have to pay the wholesale price to carry it. Next, Hanchy added home décor items including colorful Mexican platters, table linens and silverware. These products were fun and easy for Hanchy to get since she lives close to the Mexican border. She also arranged with several local artisans to carry their work including handcrafted wood items and pottery. With her background in book distribution, it was a natural for Hanchy to offer unique and interesting books to her customers. She or a family member made sure to read every book before it went up on her site so she was able to describe each book so syncly and accurately. Books on meditation and spirituality and books with fun, rowdy commentary on life for women were the main focus of her line of publications. Hanchy soon branched out into clothing offering colorful silk scarves and bright amusing T-shirts and nightshirts. She found a supplier of a unique, high-end T-shirt line who was willing to give her a very good discount. So she was able to offer these beautiful shirts at a very good price. Since women often struggle with taking time to care for themselves, Hanchy decided to carry luxury bath care products such as gentle bath soaps, loofas and sponges and essential oils. These products could be gathered together and purchased as a gift set for someone. Many of Hanchy’s friends belong to the Unitarian Universalist religion. So Hanchy also added a set of UU products primarily items that display the flaming chalice logo. All together Hanchy carried a set of unique, creative and interesting gift products that no other store could match which was exactly her goal for her target market. Hanchy’s taste is excellent and she has an uncanny ability to find items that people like. If she had a physical store, it would be bright, colorful and stuffed to the rafters with fun, provocative, unique items for sale. Because her presence is online, one of the site design challenges will be to provide a sense to site visitors of the incredible breadth and depth of Hanchy’s collection without the ability to just step in the door and gaze around the store. Hanchy herself is a garage sale queen. She loves hunting for bargains among other people’s cast offs. She often makes stunning finds including pieces like a genuine 19th century jewelry cabinet and an 18th century apothecary table. Because she shops this way, she approached her product pricing with a goal of making her customers feel like they discovered a hidden treasure at a bargain price. While her prices were high enough to provide a profit, they were on the low end of what could be charged for each item. This pricing strategy is something that would probably need to be revisited based on the results of Hanchy’s market research and the analysis provided by our virtual customers, Hanna, Ross and Suzy.
Course: | Introduction to E-Commerce |
Author: | Darcey Spears |
SKU: | 33628 |
ISBN: | 1-932808-79-5 |
Release Date: | 2005-08-25 |
Duration: | 7.5 hrs / 102 lessons |
Work Files: |
Yes |
Captions: | No |
Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |