cut from washington newspaper;jo
Anyone shopping for home electronics toys like DVD players or camcorders knows the retail competition is fierce.
Tom Sowa The Spokesman-Review Staff writer
Big dealers like Circuit City, Best Buy and even Radio Shack are looking for any advantage to lure customers into their stores.
Shoppers now confront massive displays, flashy promos and loud music that hawk the latest in consumer electronics merchandise.
The online home-electronics market has its own version of that competition; it may not be as gaudy, but it's just as intense.
Online shoppers confront a whole different pitch, and mostly from different companies than those in the retail electronics business.
Web sites for companies like J&R Music, AbT Electronics and others often feature 20 or 30 products per page. Their highly graphic click-through menus, pricing options and customized shopping carts create an online candy store for gadget hounds.
Companies that are doing well in the online market, like Spokane's One Call.com, have learned a few lessons about e-commerce and marketing.
To tweak a common refrain, they keep it simple but not stupid.
Combining loads of pictures and graphics with easy-to-follow menu choices, One Call has adopted a successful e-commerce model: help shoppers get as much information as they need without being intrusive or pesky.
One Call is the online division of Huppin's Photo, Hi-Fi and Video, the established, privately owned retail store in downtown Spokane.
Since its launch in 1994, One Call has easily become Spokane's most successful e-commerce Web site. It concentrates on quality video and audio equipment, especially newer products.
"We've doubled our business at One Call every three years," said Huppin's president Murray Huppin.
Huppin, who started One Call with modest expectations, has come to view the online site as a major way to reach customers nationwide.
"You need to find a way to personalize an impersonal shopping experience."
After a sales slump following Sept. 11, business has picked up on One Call. Huppin said the site generates about 300 online sales per day, but he declined to reveal total revenue for either One Call or Huppin's Photo.
More than 80 percent of One Call's purchases come from residents in California, New York and Texas. Like other e-commerce sites, One Call doesn't charge sales tax, except for purchases by Washington residents.
Even that small drawback didn't stop Spokane Valley resident Mike Winebarger from shopping at One Call recently.
Winebarger, a laid off Kaiser Trentwood worker, was shopping for a high-end woofer for his home stereo. He found the model he wanted through One Call, then bought it for $550.
He knew One Call was associated with Huppin's and he figured he could trust a company basically across town.
Winebarger isn't too unlike most online home-electronics consumers. He'll shop for good deals on items in the modest to mid-priced range. When he covets something more expensive, he prefers to make an in-store purchase.
Even after his pleasant One Call experience, Winebarger ended up buying a high-end TV from one of Huppins' competitors, a chain retailer on North Division.
"I don't like going to the Huppin's store. It's small. I'd prefer a larger place, with plenty of parking," Winebarger said.
Though no organization tracks total sales by e-commerce companies, the home electronics industry is big business. Total U.S. sales of home video systems, cameras and audio systems totaled $24.4 billion in 2000, the most recent year for which statistics are available.'
By some industry measures, One Call is in the top 10 among consumer-electronics sites in terms of annual sales. It's one of the top-rated home-electronics sites at BizRate, a popular Web survey company.
In the past year, as the dot-com crash took effect, many similar sites offering comparable products fell by the wayside.
Oregon Camera, a Portland-based company with a long history, was sold to national chain RitzCameras.com.
And 800.com, also based in Portland, folded in the tech slump, with Circuit City buying its customer lists.
The survivors, said Huppin, are companies that already had a retail store, or started as mail-order operations, like Crutchfield.com, an East Coast electronics retailer.
When One Call was launched in 1994, company owners tried to downplay the online site's existence. At the time, the logic was that online shopping could erode the retail store's sales.
By 1998, the opposite had occurred. The retail store enjoyed continued revenue growth, while One Call boomed and prospered.
Today, in fact, One Call generates about 80 percent of total sales for the company, with the retail store only accounting for 20 percent, said Huppin.
Each operation has a different sales team, but accountants and a few administrative positions are shared.
One key difference is that the 17 sales and customer service reps for One Call share a team bonus system. The incentive is toward sales without creating a system that pits one rep against another in the office.
The retail store, which employs about 20 sales people, uses incentives that allow for individual performance bonuses.
The One Call staff has its own office on the fourth floor of the U.S. Bank Building, a block away from Huppins' downtown store on West Main.
One Call stays open 360 days a year, offering live phone help from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Friday and from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekends.
Each day, One Call's sales agents either process completed orders or answer phone questions from customers.
Huppin said he had to be careful not to lose sight of the company's chief audience -- mostly male customers who love their home gear and are willing to spend for the newest gizmos.
At one time, One Call considered adding laptops and personal digital assistants or MP3 players. Huppin held back, realizing that one of the company's strengths was its core focus on high-quality camcorders, digital cameras, home-theater systems, DVDs and audio gear.
Price is important, but it's not the main feature that wins customer loyalty, said Huppin.
"In fact, we don't offer the lowest prices on some items. We try to compete on service and customer satisfaction."
Like other successful e-commerce companies, One Call gives shoppers quick access to someone who can help with shopping decisions. Each page on the Web site showcases an 800 number; if someone calls it, they reach a real person, not a recording or automated system.
Huppin and his One Call staff agree that the e-commerce site does best by not trying to be too fancy.
At one time, One Call thought about adding an online build-your-home-theater feature.
"We didn't have the technology available five years ago to offer that feature," said Huppin. Now he's not sure customers really need it anyway.
Like other online retailers, One Call also tried placing banner advertisements on other Web sites. Those ads didn't generate significant sales, he said.
Huppin is not interested in adding bells and whistles that try to determine what online customers want based on past visits to the One Call site.
He's visited sites like Amazon.com that offer pop-up messages like: "Hello, Murray Huppin, welcome back. We think you'd be interested in the following new items."
Said Huppin: "I don't think that experience is personalized. To me it's creepy."
Shoppers at One Call see the same pages and information, whether they are first-time visitors or veterans, said David Keith, information technology manager for One Call.
"We've worked very hard on building our own (Web) system," said Keith. "Our site is very dynamic, and we're constantly modifying it on the back end.
"One thing we've learned is that users really like how easy it is to find information about products."
Business writer Tom Sowa can be reached at (509) 459-5492 or by e-mail at
toms@spokesman.com.
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