Sales soar tenfold for sports cards hobbyist on eBay and ProStores
ProStores has the best support team I've ever seen in any company, and it's the #1 reason I stay with ProStores.
Bruce Underwood, Owner of www.ocsportscards.com
Sports cards hobbyist creates a "home run" business.
Bruce Underwood started buying sports cards for his sons, looking for a hobby they could share together. The boys lost interest after 3 months, but Bruce was hooked on collecting. He started up an eBay Store to sell the extra cards he didn't need. A sports cards dealer he worked with suggested he start selling boxes of cards, and his sales grew. Bruce was ready to open a Web store, and started exploring the Yahoo shopping cart. Then, in the summer of 2005, Bruce received an email about ProStores, and it was just what he was looking for.
Outstanding tech support sets ProStores apart
Bruce recognizes the value of great customer service. He wanted to avoid technical problems, and get solutions quickly. ProStores tech support delivers on his wish list where competitors fall short. "In September of 2005, I decided to devote the month to setting up and optimizing my ProStores Web store," Bruce says. "I made many calls to the support center, which was incredible. I could always get through to tech support quickly, and I used that service extensively when I was learning ProStores and setting up. They always go above and beyond to get me out of whatever trouble I've run into and fix the problem. I was working with a new Web guy who wanted me to switch to another provider. I looked into it, but when I called it took 15 minutes to get through on the phone and the answer I got was stupid. I called ProStores and got through right away and they solved our problem. ProStores has the best support team I've ever seen in any company, and it's the #1 reason I stay with ProStores. People can always try to sell you on some other package, but I like ProStores. It's really, really easy to use. I'm almost 52 years old and I don't want to spend my time learning some complicated new system. I've grown up with ProStores. They treat you well, they treat you fair, and you feel good about it. They always help me do what I need to do–it just makes sense to stick with what works well."
Bringing in new customers from all over the Web
Orange County Sports Cards has experienced tremendous growth since they started. "We did well starting out," Bruce says. "September was a good time of year to begin, with the holiday season coming up. The first year, we focused on getting new customers. We used the Search Engine Optimization features, and signed up with ProStores Traffic Generation System. In late 2005, we started feeding our listings to the shopping comparison sites–Froogle, Shopzilla, BizRate, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, and Yahoo Shopping. We started our own AdWords campaign with Google and Yahoo, and had a 25% increase in June, which is usually our worst month, so that was an incredible success. We ended up hiring a Web designer to re-do our website, and a search engine optimization company to improve our ranking even further. By Christmas of 2006, we increased our 2005 holiday sales by tenfold."
A selling strategy that works
"We've fine-tuned the business to target what works on each selling channel," says Bruce. "We use our eBay Store to sell individual cards. On our ProStores Web store, we just sell unopened boxes of cards. It's a commodity item, but we do a lot in volume. We do about 20 orders a week on ProStores, but some orders may be for 20 boxes. It all adds up to 200 to 400 boxes a week. We also get phone orders due to our ProStores Web site–many of our regular customers may pick up the phone to order, but they originally came through the website. I think about 50 percent of our orders are from returning customers, though it's hard to tell exactly now that we've enabled anonymous checkout. We had it turned off at first, until I saw a ProStores webinar that explained how it can increase sales. It was a great choice–it's better to have more sales than know where each one comes from. Now about one-third of our customers check out anonymously, one-third are returning, and one-third are new."
Smart features make business operations easy
The nature of Bruce's business creates a need for frequent price changes, which can be tedious and time-consuming for some Web store owners. But Bruce's Advanced ProStores Web store makes updates a snap. "Sports cards pricing changes frequently, kind of like the stock market. We love the Product Search feature on ProStores, which makes it easy for us to change prices quickly. We use it all the time, it's so easy. We frequently change our pricing based on current dealer quotes, which we put right into ProStores–and the price is immediately changed. Adding products is easy, too. There isn't anything about ProStores that is difficult when it comes to the stuff you need to do every day. ProStores saves us a lot of time that way. We've streamlined much of what we do with templates and processes. It used to take me a full 16-hour day every week to update my website; now it only takes a couple of hours to update our products and prices. ProStores has done a great job in meeting our needs, and helped us get to where we are today. Especially the ease of using the service–I knew nothing about how to open and run a website when I started."
ProStores gets better and better
Bruce is very pleased with the continuous improvements ProStores makes to its product and service. "New releases come out without any glitches, and that's great, because our business is dependent on our website working like it should. We really like the pre-orders feature introduced in a recent update. The minute a new product is coming out, we get it up on our website right away for pre-orders along with the release date. Some people will pre-order, and some will just look and come back when the product releases. But it's great because we can track those views. We closely monitor what the top 20 most-viewed items are, and that tells us what our top sellers will be, so we can plan inventory orders. In this way, pre-orders not only help increase our sales, but help us manage the business as well."
Reliable speeds and service
Bruce understands the importance of a fast, customer-friendly online shopping experience to maximize sales. ProStores offers the speed and reliability he requires. "The speed on the ProStores website is always really fast," reports Bruce. "It's very reliable, especially recently–it just keeps getting better and better. We haven't had any problems at all in over a year. I'd definitely recommend ProStores to others. I'd give ProStores a grade A in overall service, support, and flexibility–it's a great tool to have."
ProStores creates exponential growth
Bruce had a great business on eBay, but he knew not everyone shops on eBay. To achieve his maximum potential, Bruce needed a Web store that could reach every sports card collector. "ProStores has expanded our market far beyond what I am getting on eBay", Bruce shares. "When we started with ProStores in fall of 2005 our sales on eBay were $5,000 to $6,000 a month. In 2006, our business sold close to $100,000 in December. That's a huge increase in just one year. We're making great money and profits with ProStores, and it just keeps growing. Sales this year are already running 30% higher than last year. As we continue to grow, we're meeting with another company to take on more product lines, possibly some gaming items. Who knows where all this will lead. I never thought this would be so big. I thought this would just be my hobby business, but it's turned into serious business–it looks like we may top a million in total sales this year!"
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