Let’s talk technology and the nut and bolts of operating your website. You’re on the Miva platform? What do you see as the pros and cons of it?
We were already established on the Miva platform (hosted with Cyberhost) before I arrived. It is secure and works 24/7. Even though we’re on an older version, it works well and I’ve had a good experience. Although some things are not as customizable, we’re not looking to upgrade MIVA. We’re developing a custom shopping cart, though, because we want some additional flexibility and customizable functionality.
What about processing and payments?
We don’t do any card processing online. It is all offline and non-real-time. Part of the reason is security. Part of the reason is that we’re not a widget company that ships boxed inventoried products the same day. Rather than dealing with backorders, we find it better to process the order as it it is filled. The benefits of doing offline processing definitely outweigh the benefits of doing it online. We deal with fewer refunds and backorders.

How do you handle international customers? Any special fraud programs in place?
We do address verification, and direct contact and confirmation with international customers. Because each order is hand processed we can spot inaccuracies and potential fraud threats. Any orders over $300 require a special form we send after the order has been placed.

You have a corporate policy against shipping to Mexico, Russia and all of Africa. Why?
There is just too much fraud that takes places as a result of doing business with these countries to make it worthwhile.

Let’s talk customer acquisition. It looks like word of mouth is important? Event marketing, I assume is big, too.
Both are really important. We do word of mouth and event marketing across the country. We don’t host events ourselves. Instead, we get involved with green living events around the country, such as The Green Festival in San Francisco, Green America and numerous other conferences. I love trade shows and I’m trying to find an herbal IT conference that I can attend. Haven’t found one yet, unfortunately.

Let’s talk SEO.
We do all of our SEO in house. We use Google Analytics and Google Base for our shopping feeds. Also, we cover our keywords, meta-data, headers, alt tags etc… everything indexable to keep us in the search light.

We use Nextopia’s technology in a several different ways. We use the EcommISearch module for our site search and the new Out of Stock Alerts module which enables customers to add their email on a per-SKU basis. When we receive new product and update our inventory and shopping cart, the system automatically sends out an email. It is a great way to drive sales.

Selecting Nextopia for our site search has been one of the best decisions we made. I love Nextopia. I really do. I’ve really enjoyed working with the engineers tremendously. When I’ve needed applications developed, they’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty several times. Probably the main reason our relationship works is that they’re the right size of company for us. I know I can talk to Chris Bannister (my Nextopia account rep) and get stuff done. I work with other vendors and don’t get anywhere near the same level of personalized attention. With other vendors, I’m not just not as important. With Nextopia, I am really, really important.

The Right Amount of Cardamon at Just the Right Time

Let’s talk Social Marketing. You’re tied into Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and You Tube. What does social marketing do for you?
Keeping in touch with the herbal community is critical for us. Social marketing gives us a face, so we’re not an anonymous wall. It allows customers to talk to us as well as interact. As we both participate in this discussion and observe it, we find out what our customers want.

Mountain Rose Herbs launched a user generated video contest in October 2009. Customers were asked to showcase their love of herbs, teas, spices, oils, and all things botanical.
The creator of the winning video received $1,000 and featured placement through the company’s social media accounts.
The idea came from internal discussions. The promotional video introducing the contest really captures who we are as a company. We wanted the video to encourage customer participation, we hired a local guy named Norm Scott, who did a terrific job. The entries were great. It is really fun to see how we touch people’s lives and play a part in their practice of an organic herbal lifestyle. (The delightful winning entry came from Catherine Wing and Bill Buckendorf who created a rapping rodent, Chives the Mouse).

Looked at your Twitter feed. Seems to be a combination of news tweets and coupon offers?
The key is having someone on your staff who has the time to keep on top of it. I’m definitely not that guy. Our marketing department handles it. Overall, Twitter helps keep our name present in any discussions relating to the herbal industry. From my perspective as a Mountain Rose employee and as a musician, I think it is a really good tool.

Where do you go to learn more about ecommerce innovations? What are some of the resources?
We work with a database programmer, Will Emmerson. He does a lot of our custom backend development for our ERP system. For example, he wrote the back end between Miva and our system. I work with him collaboratively. I’ll take an idea for a program or problem we need to solve. We’ll talk about options and possible solutions and then develop whatever we think is the best fix. Between Shawn, Will and I, we follow advances in technology and reason about how it could fit into our shop.

For a new retailer just starting out, what are a couple of things you would recommend they do?
First, I’d invest in IT and use it. Don’t go cheap and scrimp unnecessarily. Allocate whatever is necessary (time and/or money) to do a good job. It really can help you grow efficiently.

Finally, what is one thing that people probably don’t know about Mountain Rose Herbs?
Our corporate IT policy dictates that everything we buy is EPEAT Certified Gold. Everything we buy for our staff of 80 plus people, from desktops and monitors, to networking equipment, needs to meet this standard.

(Ed Note: EPEAT is a system that helps purchasers evaluate, compare and select electronic products based on their environmental attributes.)

Thanks Nate for your time. If you want to hear Nate’s other love, visit his band’s website. He manages it, of course.

Can you give us quick summary of your company, operations and markets.
Mountain Rose Herbs was founded in 1987. We’re located in Eugene, OR, and sell a wide range of natural botanical products, including organic herbs, spices, teas, and oils. We carry approximately 2,000 product SKUs. We have a head office in Eugene and operate several warehouses around the city. We do some manufacturing to produce our own finished products. Our business, however, is primary selling bulk ingredients to people who want to make their own herbal or aromatherapy products. You can order 4 oz or 200 lbs of nettles from us.

MountainRoseHerbs.com-Nettles

Our customer base is people into organic agriculture, herbs, aromatherapy, herbal and alternative healing, sustainable business practices, and botany. They take what they source from us and make their own products for retail and personal use.

Which products are your favorites?
I use a lot of the products we sell, especially the herbal teas. Once you start working around herbalists, you quickly learn that there are lots and lots of cool products and uses for them. For example, I’ve got a friend who burned himself while camping. He didn’t have health insurance so I spoke with some of the herbalists at work about a solution. They gave me a recipe for a salve which helped him completely recover without any scarring.

If you weren’t running the back end of an ecommerce outfit, what would you be doing?
Playing music or working in IT. I love music and I love IT!

Does your business have seasonality?
Getting involved with herbs and the products we sell is a lifestyle. We’re pretty steady all year long, although we do see some fourth quarter spikes from people who do bulk orders to make products for one-of-a-kind holiday sales and fairs, or who are planning to give them as Christmas gifts.

How has your customer base been affected by the economic downturn?
As I said, we sell to people who are enthusiastic about the herbal lifestyle. Buying from us forms part of their healthcare. When the economy is tough and health care increasingly expensive, people take more responsibility for their own health.

What do you do to stand out to in the marketplace?
We have an awesome marketing department that is very in tune with the movement. They focus on the fact that we are a company worth supporting, we value our employees, our loose culture and, of course, our high quality.

Thanks for your time, Nate. We’ll be back in a couple of days with part two.

Here is the second half of our two-part interview with Stefan Von Imhof, a business graduate of the University of Massachusetts (and proud Minuteman) who turned his love of gaming into a thriving online retailing operation. He discusses his most important vendors, why Black Hat SEO isn’t worth it, and the real value of Twitter (hint: it’s not notifying the world that you had toast for breakfast).

Let’s talk about technology and the nut and bolts of operating a site? Who are you hosting with and what are some of the vendors you use?

We host with a company called Channel Advisor. We started working with Channel Advisor in the early days back when we used to sell a lot more on eBay and Amazon. If you are a multichannel retailer (selling on eBay and Amazon as well as online from your own site) you need something to tie everything together. The Channel Advisor platform allows us to sell through multiple channels under one “dashboard.”

The second big vendor we use is Shipworks, which provides our shipping software and is closely integrated with Channel Advisor. When you really look at our business, we’re not a video game company, we’re a shipping company. Shipping packages is what we do. It’s certainly the most important thing we do. We ship hundreds of packages every day and getting stuff out the door correctly is everything. Shipworks is both inexpensive and very customizable. It handles emailing customers, email notification (such as “Your Order as Shipped” emails), out of stock notifications, and a bunch of other stuff.

A third company we rely on is Nextopia. With 9,000 SKUs, it can be very difficult to organize all of the info. One of the things that bugs people with Google searches is that you can type in “Wii controller” and not easily find any Wii controllers. Instead, you might find Wii controller jackets, skins, holders, and everything else related to Wii controllers. That’s kind of what I wanted to avoid on our site. On a regular day, we’ll have 3500-8000 search queries on our site. Nextopia has been a great tool to deliver relevant answers to about 99.5% of our searchers. The other half percent who can’t find what they want – we find out why and tweak the engine. It’s a constant improvement process and Nextopia has been really important to what we do. They have been a great partner in our growth. They make a great product, provide great support. and they’re super friendly. What more can you ask for?

Have you been tempted by any SEO black hat opportunities?

Absolutely. SEO is such a tricky game. There is no question that blackhat SEO works; if it didn’t, nobody would do it. But the last thing you want to do is break the rules because 1. you can get caught, and 2. the benefit will only last a short time before Google finds out what you are doing, tweaks the algorithm, and it’s all over. My advice to retailers considering blackhat techniques is not to do it: you run the risk of getting blacklisted from search results, and that is death for a website.

With gaming inherently linked with people on the leading edge of Web technology and behavior, how are you finding the ROI of involving yourself in social media?

As far as Twitter, we used to use it far more when it first became popular, primarily with sales offers and coupons. My personal opinion (as someone who has done social media consulting for other companies) is that I honestly don’t think people are terribly involved with Twitter. Twitter boasts a really huge user base, but I’m just not sure how many of them are actively listening to each other, and how much is just “noise”. The one area where we’ve found that having a Twitter presence excels is in customer service. It is really the best way to reach a retailer like us because it cuts through the email and email filter walls. I tell people all the time – if you are having trouble reaching a company, try Twittering them or write on their Facebook wall – it’s probably the quickest way to get a response.

Do you see social media as an opportunity to blow out old stock or juice monthly sales?

Yeah, absolutely. While I think Twitter is maybe overrated, all social media is still important. I personally think a lot of small businesses sell Facebook short. Facebook is probably the most important social media presence a company can have, because it offers much more personal communication. With Twitter, anybody and their brother can show up in your Twitter stream. But when a company shows up in your Facebook news feed, it is a much more personal experience. We are active on Facebook because we want to show people that we’re both open and responsive to customer complaints. That’s really the key – connecting with customers on a personal level.

Final question, if you weren’t running an ecommerce store, what would you be doing?

I don’t know – to tell you the truth I haven’t really thought about that. Probably working in the renewable energy industry, maybe solar, which is of course going to be huge someday. There are a lot of companies doing a lot of amazing things with solar energy around here. My college background is business so I’d probably looking for opportunities in green tech/renewable energy. Either that or city planning. Santa Barbara is an amazing place, and it takes a lot of urban planning to keep it that way.

Thanks for taking the time to speak with us Stefan. Good luck finding the time to actually eat some breakfast; filling orders for Modern Warfare 2 and I’m sure DJ Hero is probably keeping you very busy.

 In between driving holiday sales and driving his family to nearby Disneyland, eHobbies.com, President Ken Kikkawa talked to us about how he provides hobby enthusiasts with more than 60,000 SKUs in a wide range of hobby and specialty toy categories.

A Nextopia customer since January 2009, Ken discusses his favorite metrics, how he succeeds against national toy chains, why he likes the Yahoo! Stores platform, and the challenges of seasonal retailing.

You sell hobbies and specialty toys that are purchased by a wide demographic range. In addition to B2C customers, you also sell to institutional organizations such as camps, schools and the Boy Scouts. How do you address their different purchasing needs?

It is a challenge we’re just starting to figure it out. Each organization is different. Firstly, in terms of awareness, most of these organizations find us through online search or word-of-mouth referrals. We haven’t done any real specific marketing other than add a couple of pages to our website.

The second big area is in payment type. Most of these organizations do not pay up front with a credit card, and the preferred method and terms differ widely. For example, schools usually need to pay via purchase order. Because we need to make it easy for them to order from us, we’ve modified our payment and financial policies (including adding different payment options in our shopping cart).

A third area is in our product selection, where we offer a wide range of categories that reflect the different age levels, for example, that you find in scouting. A big category for us is model rockets. For the youngest scouts, say in first grade, we’ll provide pre-assembled kits that are simpler than what older boys in grades 4/5 want. Offering a wide range of products allows us to meet whatever level of product sophistication a scout troop needs.

Are there any challenges in selling toys online that you think affect your company more than other retailing categories? I’m thinking here of the annual media “hot toy” frenzy, with the Tickle Me Elmo craze of 1996 coming to mind.

We try not to play in the hot toy arena. It is very competitive (product availability, pricing, etc.) and you are up against the large/national mass merchants and toy chain stores. They can get behind certain products with huge advertising budgets, leaving a very tough grind for independent retailers. Instead, we play more in the specialty arena, with a product line comprised of more timeless categories like car model kits.

You said in your September 2009 Practical Ecommerce column that your priorities before the holiday season became too hectic “were optimizing SEO & PPC programs, site enhancements (updates to the item pages including video demos and product delivery estimator) and a quick and easy way for customers to get real-time order updates without logging in to their account.” How easy it is for a Yahoo Store to incorporate the customization that this obviously requires?

Customizing a Yahoo! Store is not easy—and I speak from many years of experience—but the tools are there for developers to work around. (We rely heavily on our developer network to do it). Over the years, Yahoo! has rolled out additional enhancements that are beneficial for merchants. The options to customize the shopping cart have been a very good upgrade and it is now totally customizable. We moved to Yahoo! in 2001, left in 2005, and returned late in 2006. We just found that for a retailer of our size, it provided a really robust platform that we could depend on.

In the same column, you describe yourself as a merchant at heart, having worked as an assistant buyer for May Company department stores in the 1980s. You mention working on the floor during November and December and getting a chance to get customers reactions to merchandise on the spot. How is this different from the online environment?

I used to be a buyer in the pillows and bedding categories. There are very specific fill weights and densities that help people sleep comfortably, depending on their sleeping positions. When you are physically standing on the store floor, it is easy to impart this knowledge to shoppers and either help them find what they’re looking for or what you know will really help them.

You can’t really replicate this interaction online but there are tools that can help you. I really like to help customers on the phone and find out exactly what they need. Email support is another good opportunity. I like to peruse our customer support email boxes. I look at what they are asking for and what we are saying. While it obviously helps close more sales, it also helps me exert some quality control over our sales conversations, ensuring that we’re converting as many prospects as possible into happy customers.

How can online retailers recreate some of the key elements of in-person retailing in a virtual store?

You need to create a conversation channel with the prospect. We use email, telesales, and live chat. We’ve used the latter for two years and I frequently review the logs in the same way that I look through email threads. We have also started to take the best questions from our customers and turn them into a hobby FAQ.

How does site search fit into your merchandising strategies?

About 25% of our visitors go straight to the search box so it is a really important piece of technology. I particularly like Nextopia’s redirection functionality, which enables us to direct shoppers to specific landing pages based on their search terms. For example, here is what a shopper will see when searching for “slot cars” on our site.

Thanks for your time Ken. Give Mickey a big hug from the engineering team at Nextopia.