Posted by Barney Beal(opens in new tab), Content Director, NetSuite
Distributors and manufacturers are looking to ecommerce(opens in new tab) to fuel growth and new revenue opportunities by using the online channel to expand market reach and increase business with existing customers. Innovators are also looking beyond B2B markets to capture new revenue with direct-to-consumer sales.
RST Brands, a manufacturer of home and lifestyle décor and furnishings, is capitalizing on the direct-to-consumer opportunity with a relaunch of its rstbrands.com(opens in new tab) and flowwall.com(opens in new tab) B2C sites on NetSuite SuiteCommerce.
With SuiteCommerce, RST Brands is growing its direct-to-consumer channel as a complement to its core B2B business of partnering with leading retailers such as Costco, Amazon, HomeDepot and Sears to produce branded lines of indoor/outdoor furnishings and home organization materials.
Relaunching the two B2C sites with SuiteCommerce in late 2013 met RST Brands’ requirements for advanced search and navigation functionality, faster site performance, streamlined checkout, self-service customer tools and support for mobile devices. Since then, RST Brands has seen improvements in key metrics by taking advantage of new functionality in the cloud ecommerce platform such as:
- Responsive Design
o Increase in mobile visits
o Increase in number of orders - One-Page Checkout
o Decrease in abandoned carts
o Sales conversion up - My Account
o Decrease in service calls
o Increase in repeat orders - Solr Search and Faceted Navigation
o Increase in time on site
o Increase in page views and visits
“We have definitely seen an increase in mobile engagement,” said Matt Grimm, RST Brands Director of Ecommerce. “The speed is better, the search is better, especially faceted search so people can filter results. SuiteCommerce has opened the door to do a lot of exciting things.”
SuiteCommerce builds on the success that RST Brands has achieved using NetSuite as an end-to-end solution covering financials, manufacturing(opens in new tab), warehousing and fulfillment, procurement, inventory and order management(opens in new tab), CRM(opens in new tab) and ecommerce. Upgrading from QuickBooks Enterprise, RST Brands tripled its revenue from 2011 to 2013 while leveraging NetSuite flexibility in its B2B operations, such as kitting orders across seven distribution centers and fulfilling orders directly to consumers on behalf of its retail partners.