retailfeature
A little Gem J
ack Cannon and Gemma Archer are committed to providing high-quality customer service through their online toy shop, Electric GemZ. Talking to them both, I was impressed by their dedication to their customers and their firm belief that, in Jack’s words, “a customer should be treated
as a customer, not a percentage”. The business, Sunshine Agencies Ltd (the holding company name), set up Electric GemZ five years ago. Due to illness in the family, both Jack and Gemma had to stop working their day jobs; Jack worked in IT at the Imperial War Museum, and previously as senior buyer for Alders in Australia, and Gemma worked in the legal department at Kew Gardens. Jack’s time at Alders has affected how he approaches his business, and he told me the most valuable lesson he learned was to never think you are more important than you are. He said: “When you asked me what my job title was I didn’t want to say ‘managing director’ or ‘co-director’, I wanted to add ‘sweeper-upper’ too. It’s my belief that you always need grounding and humility in a business that requires you to interact with customers.” ElectricGemZ is based out of a warehouse in Orpington, Kent, and, as it says on the website, is just a small firm specialising in licensed toys and games. Listed on the main site are more than 2,000 products, with new lines and ranges being added all the time. Everything the business sells is brand new, in stock and unopened, and the business aims to dispatch everything on the day it’s ordered. Jack explained: “If you clear checkout before 2pm (Monday to Friday) we’ll do what we can to get it out the door, securely packaged and on its way to our cutsomers the same day, as fast as we can.”
How it all began The business started simply by selling Crayola online, and the pair note that Vivid Imaginations was very supportive of them in the early days. Jack said: “When we started selling toys we were working at home, and very quickly ran out of space. In year two we found we needed even more space and got our own warehouse. In year three we moved into the warehouse and slept on a bed in there because we were waking up at 5am and working late into the night to fulfill orders. At Christmas of year three, we had so many orders to pack and dispatch that I literally worked my fingers to the bone; they were bleeding. It was, in part, what prompted us to farm out the packing work to a fulfillment company. The website, as it is now, launched in September 2012, and the next steps in its evolution are focused on allowing it to be more functional, and list more products. We aim to have 5,000 lines available next year. ” The business is currently performing strongly, helped by the multiple platforms the company uses. The main website is the focus of the business, but the
52 Toyworld
Jack Cannon, joint owner of online toy retailer Electric GemZ (
www.electricgemz.co.uk) alongside Gemma Archer, spoke to Toy World about the business and what it takes to provide a bricks and mortar shopping experience in the online channel. Tom Roberts reports.
company also sells on eBay, Play. com and Amazon. Jack commented: “This is our first year with Amazon, and it’s doubled our sales. The debate about third-party selling on websites such as these has received a lot of attention this year, and some companies try to paint online retailers as the bad guys. We don’t want to steal customers from the high street, that’s not our aim. Online is a very important channel for retail nowadays, yet some suppliers are still very hesitant to work with us. “With Electric GemZ we have made a point of trying to present to our customers the same level of choice and service as they would find in a bricks and mortar shop. Customers can choose exactly what they want from the site; what they see is truly what they will get. When it comes to collectable figures that would normally be in a counter-top display box, in a shop you can choose which one you want, while some online shops would just pick one at random and send it to you. We list every item on our site allowing our customers to be safe in the knowledge that they will receive the one they want. We also take special care to only show items on the site that we have in stock. It’s terrible customer service to have a box suddenly flash up saying an item is out of stock. It’s frustrating for them, and would make us look bad.” The company’s main suppliers include Vivid
Imaginations, Character Options, Tomy, VTech and Golden Bear, with more to be added in 2014. The business has experienced especially strong success with products such as Moshi Monsters, Uglies, Fireman Sam, and the Toot-Toot range of products. Jack explained: “We love our suppliers and their products, because they are high-quality and sell very well. We try wherever we can not to cherry pick but supply a full range. We also try not to look at the products as categories, and instead try to present them as a customer would search for them, by brands and characters.”
Future developments Jack explained that as the company and its reputation grows, so too will the amount of product ranges it carries, but is quick to state “never at the expense of the customer. We don’t want to expand too fast and miss orders.” But there is something else at the front of Jack’s mind, and it is interesting to hear about what online retailers require from suppliers, and sometimes don’t get. Jack said: “It would be great for the toy industry to recognise what online retailers need when they sell to us. First and foremost, we need good images to use online, information about the ranges, lifestyle shots
to show children enjoying using the items; we need to provide the customers with as much information as possible in the online channel. You’d be surprised by how many companies are not set up to provide us with this. “Also, and it sounds like a simple thing, we need to
know the dimensions of a product. I can’t tell you how many enquiries we get about how big something is. Take jigsaw puzzles as an example, some companies clearly state how big a puzzle will be when it’s made, others don’t. Without tearing open the products, and thereby depriving us of a product to sell, there is often no way for us to tell our customers because the suppliers don’t tell us.” My final question to Jack was whether or not he would consider opening a bricks and mortar store in the future, and whether that was where he saw the business heading. He said: “I can’t see any point. At one point we looked at doing an Argos-style click and collect service with a room people could walk into, but Argos already provides that. Truthfully, we are doing very well as we are, and the flexibility of running a retail website allows us to focus on maintaining the level of service we provide to our customers. It’s as simple as that.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222 |
Page 223 |
Page 224 |
Page 225 |
Page 226 |
Page 227 |
Page 228 |
Page 229 |
Page 230 |
Page 231 |
Page 232 |
Page 233 |
Page 234 |
Page 235 |
Page 236 |
Page 237 |
Page 238 |
Page 239 |
Page 240 |
Page 241 |
Page 242 |
Page 243 |
Page 244 |
Page 245 |
Page 246 |
Page 247 |
Page 248 |
Page 249 |
Page 250 |
Page 251 |
Page 252 |
Page 253 |
Page 254