Exclusively Yours
American Demographics, July 2000
The Italian motorcycle company Ducati set an e-commerce record this
January when it introduced its latest model online. The company sold
the entire first year production of 500 units within 31 minutes. Customers
from Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia screamed through the
point, click, and purchase sequence for the $15,000 limited-production
vehicle, eager to place a 10 percent deposit on their credit cards.
Driven by demanding Ducatisti, as the bike's fans are known, the
venerable company revved up and peeled out. Within hours of the
buying frenzy, Ducati began offering reservations for model year
2001. When wannabe riders booked all 750 bikes scheduled for that
year, the Web sale was extended to model year 2002, and again, all
750 sold. Conceived as a fun way to celebrate the millennium, the
Web launch went "beyond my expectations," admits Frederico
Minoli, Ducati's chairman.
Ducati is far from unique. In recent months, a plethora of companies
have chosen to introduce new products online, and, like Ducati,
they aren't all high-tech start-ups. This March, The Gap debuted
a maternity clothes line priced between $24 and $84 exclusively
on their Web site (www.gap.com) because customers wanted the clothes
and stores simply didn't have the room. The move to e-launching
is so new, and "happening so quickly," according to Wendy
Liebmann, president of WSL Strategic Retail in New York, it is almost
impossible to quantify.
The reasons why are not. In fact, there are a rainbow of reasons
why companies have turned to the cybershelf. Costs are lower and
margins typically higher than with a traditional product launch,
and firms are able to modify their sales approach quickly and often.
For marketers, the practice is a bonanza. Businesses can tailor
products for specific markets, and gain access to a database of
friendly customers who are eager to dispense advice. "We found
out that the Internet is a fantastic tool for international communication.
Ducati is an international brand. Put them together, and there is
a huge potential," says Jason Jacobs, Ducati's director of
investor relations.
Cameron Meierhoefer, an e-tail and retail analyst with PC Data
in Reston, Virginia, believes the push toward online launches is
a trend that will grow, although the percentage of these rollouts
"will depend on the industry," he says. For example, many
established electronic manufacturers are tied to agreements with
retailers. But for small companies making and selling their own
products, Meierhoefer predicts close to 100 percent of launches
will eventually be online. "It will let them control the scale
of the rollout while production is still low," he notes.
Just ask Command Audio of Redwood City, California (www.commandaudio.com).
Offering the world's first wireless audio-on-demand system, the
company decided to bypass traditional establishments at first. "We
opted for an e-launch because we had something that most consumer
electronics retailers didn't deal with," says Wilson Craig,
Command Audio's public relations manager. "It's a totally new
service, a totally new product. We wanted to introduce it."
Command Audio's service allows listeners to access hundreds of
audio programs on a handheld receiver, giving a commuter the option
of listening to NPR's "All Things Considered" or audio
versions of the Wall Street Journal or Sports Illustrated no matter
what the time. The service, launched last December in Denver and
Phoenix, is scheduled to be in the top 50 radio markets by next
year.
To introduce such an innovative product, Command Audio representatives
visited in-market trade shows, and told interested consumers to
go to the Web site if they wanted to buy the new units. The company
then targeted this first generation of purchasers, calling them
for lengthy conversations to determine what they liked and didn't
like about the service. They also asked questions such as: What
was your experience when you opened the box? Did you have an easy
time finding the programs you wanted? How was the listener care
service?
Craig says the company used the customer responses to make major
changes to programming, the Web site, and customer service before
the retail launch in mid-March. "Once we got to retail, there
were new issues," he says. "But with the Web launch, we
knocked out the big ones."
The ability to find out what core consumers think is one of the
biggest advantages of online launches. Larry Burns, CEO of the Carol
Stream, Illinois, market research firm StartSampling Inc., likens
Web launches to getting focus group reports "without having
to get on a plane and look through the mirror."
At San Francisco-based kerna LLC, a Web launch of Razer Boomslang,
a mouse designed to improve the performance of PC gamers, has left
company representatives feeling like they've formed a kind of community
with their customers. "The feedback on the product has been
amazing," says Sandra Goldberg, the company's CEO and president.
"We're getting a couple dozen e-mails a day. In retail, if
you get one a week, you think that's pretty good." The reverse
is true, too. Karna found customers more likely to read updates
and other information when it was sent via e-mail, reducing, if
not eliminating snail mail expenses.
Karna chose a Web launch after making the decision to market its
product to gamers. Kerna's technology can be applied to a host of
devices with medical, engineering, and design applications —
wherever dexterity, precision and speed are paramount. But testing
by various targeted groups of mouse users proved gamers were most
enthused about kerna's product. When the company learned that a
good majority of America's 35 million gamers (most of whom are in
their 30s, with income in the $50,000 range) are already heavy Web
users, it decided to move to a November e-launch, which also eliminated
the expense of getting the unknown product into retail. The launch's
strong press created such buzz that retailers such as Electronic
Boutique approached the company about stocking the mouse on their
shelves.
Like Command Audio, kerna also used its e-relationship with early
buyers to its advantage. For example, when tweaking the beta version
resulted in some shipping delays, the firm e-mailed buyers to explain.
Goldberg says that consumers responded positively to the fact that
the company was taking the extra time to make a mouse that would
roar. Without the dialog, the delay could have been a disaster.
However, an e-launch is not always a smooth proposition, as Handspring
learned in October. The Bay Area company targeted male business
travelers between the ages of 35 and 54 for the introduction of
its personal digital assistant, the Visor. Strong press created
a wave of anticipation, driving droves of consumers to www.handspring.com,
which promptly crashed under the onslaught. Orders had to be put
on hold, as Handspring hired and trained a larger telephone sales
force to handle the traffic.
"We didn't focus on that as much as we should have,"
says Claire Dean, Handspring's director of marketing communications.
"That's the good and bad thing about working with early adopters.
They're very vocal, both when they're thrilled and when things aren't
going well."
Even though it didn't go as planned, Handspring believes an e-launch
was "absolutely the right thing to do," Dean says. "We
feel like we turned it around. We dealt with people who were very
upset with us. And the Web launch allowed Handspring to use collected
data to refine its retail launch." When the two models of Handspring's
Visor appeared in stores early in April, for example, the company
and the retailers knew that graphite and blue would be the top-selling
colors.
Although online product launches are gaining notoriety, they aren't
expected to rival retail launches just yet. For one thing, only
32 percent of Internet users have actually made an online purchase,
according to the Internet Commerce Briefing by the Intermarket Group.
And only 64 percent of Internet users who have used the Web to research
products have made a purchase online.
WSL Strategic's Liebmann argues that an online launch can be a
double-edged sword with the ability to make problems worse faster
if a retailer lacks a focused message or sells products that fall
short of expectations. An online launch helps marketers "connect
to consumers, converse with consumers, and convert consumers,"
says StartSampling's Burns, "but the product has to deliver."
Handspring's Dean, who has weathered the battle but not yet the
war, says it's still too early to tell how online launches will
fare compared with the traditional retail rollout. "This is
kind of new and interesting to watch," he says. "It feels
like comparing apples and oranges at this point." But not for
long. As we all know, in the Internet Economy change happens at
warp speed.
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