Courtesy Pixabay | QuinceMedia

The first milestone of the holiday sales season is over, and we hope that what Amazon calls the “Turkey Five” was everything you hoped for. You worked hard, chose the right products to feature and raked in the receipts.

Now what?

Don’t think of this as hitting the pause button, but it is time to take stock of, well, what you have in stock.

Some helpful suggestions:

Customer Profile – Knowing your customer is key – their buying habits and hopefully their loyalty is something you can build on. But how can you leverage that information in a way that sets you apart from your competitors?

If you’re a practitioner of Recency, Frequency, Monetary Value (R-F-M), you can use the data you capture to highlight your best and most recent/promising customers to maximize sales potential over the next few weeks.

Not familiar with R-F-M? You can read more about the concept in our two-part series on the Freestyle blog, Customer Scoring in M.O.M. Using R-F-M and How to Implement R-F-M in M.O.M. – these provide all of the information you need. 

Inventory Matters! – Now is the time to make sure your commerce site inventory and system of record are in complete, synchronous harmony with each other.

Remember that you can’t sell what you don’t have in stock, well, not without getting into trouble with your customers. Our customers here at Freestyle are focused on inventory every day of the year, and the lesson that we take from that is using spreadsheets to juggle inventory levels across channels is never sustainable. In fact we take joy in having helped end that nightmare for our customers by supplying the tools they need to synchronize inventory across all their sales channels.

Deadlines Ahead – Every one of your customers expects their carefully selected gifts will arrive on time, and to accomplish that you need to know when to ship. The USPS has a lot of helpful information about shipping deadlines during the hectic holiday season.

If you would like to join the discussion please enter a comment below, and if you’re looking for a gift for yourself, a new order & inventory management solution could be just what you need to make your next holiday season merry and bright. Contact us at marketing@freestylesolutions.com to learn more.

Courtesy iStockphoto | Zinkevych

For many eCommerce businesses, understanding the buying habits of Gen Z and turning that knowledge into a successful marketing plan is something of a Holy Grail. The mere fact that this generation is different than the oft-discussed Millennial consumer was a revelation to many, but as we know the technology native Z’er has a different perspective on brand loyalty than the technology adapted Millennial shopper.

No matter the route taken to arrive at the destination of Gen Z sales, it is impossible to understate the economic value of a successful or even moderately productive effort to reach this market. If as some estimate, the buying power of this group can reach $143 billion, that is a lot of sales up for grabs.

One factor that plays into the wheelhouse of modern eCommerce businesses is that Gen Z values a cohesive, easy-to-transact sale on mobile devices, something that we have been preaching to our customer choir over the past year. In fact, the experience within a sale is something that weighs heavily with this consumer group. Measuring and adapting to the preferences of Generation Z as a group and noting the preferences and purchase history of each consumer is something that can prove to be a real challenge to eComm’s lacking the ability to track and segment business. The lesson to be learned is that the success of a marketing plan can be impacted by the system that executes the sale.

For an interesting take on how you can help to build on your strategy to capture business with Gen Z, read “What Gen Z wants for Christmas” from Marketing Dive.

Comment below to join the conversation about Gen Z. Contact us at marketing@freestylesolutions.com to speak with us about how you can support your front-end strategy to reach Gen Z with a superior back-office application.

Two iconic but troubled retailers took steps to resolve questions about their future this week although their actions can be seen as taking each in a different direction.

JC Penney announced that their vacant CEO position will be filled by Jill Soltau who, until now, filled a similar role for Joann Stores. The company was badly in need of direction and has much to do to secure its financial wellbeing, making this hire now gives Soltau the ability to have some impact on how Penney plans for the Holiday season and in many ways that will be a key factor in how the market views her and the future of the company. Read more about Solatu’s new role as CEO.

Sears shared very different news with the announcement of the closing of eleven stores and that layoffs in some stores would be begin on December 23^rd.  Sears CEO Eddie Lampert is in negotiation with creditors to restructure debt and to sell assets. The proposal included warnings about near term financial problems. You can learn more about the issues facing Sears and what the future holds for the brand.   

What is the future of these two retail giants and is it possible that one or both can survive long term in the new retail climate?  We have seen other large retailers fail and while there is some finality to one version of a retailer we also know that they can be reincarnated as FAO Schwarz prepares to reopen a store in New York City. There is also news about a potential revival of Toys R Us.

It is very hard to predict the fate of JC Penney and Sears or whether this incarnation of both stores would necessarily be the last one.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at marketing@freestylesoutions.com.

With the holiday’s fast approaching, we wanted to share posts from last year where we spoke about key areas of an order management system to get the most out of your system during the holiday season.

We wanted to revisit these posts for you that way you guys can get an idea on how exactly these area’s can greatly impact you to have a strong holiday season.

We also will revisit our on-demand webinars we ran last year showing you the inside of Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) so you’re ready to take control of this holiday season, making this one more so than last one the most important holiday season ever.

We covered last year:

• Order Promotions
• Order Entry Essentials
• Ways to Drive Free Shipping
• Shipping Workflow
• Inventory Management
• Protecting Yourself from Phishing Emails
• Reduce Mistakes and Save Money – Warehouse Essentials
• Holiday Returns Management

As always keep a look out on our blog for any latest news, trends for this holiday season.

In our latest eBook we tackle the ever so challenging task of understanding the Nutraceutical industry and how a strong back office system can mean all the difference in the world.

In this eBook, we look at the Nutraceutical industry and how to implement a strategy to manage your complex inventory requirements with a system like Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.).

This eBook is available to anyone who is interested in reading about inventory and order management, those who sell in the nutraceutical space and to those who have an interest in the industry and want to see some of the trends impacting the space.

To read more about it, visit our information center. To learn more about what we can do to improve operations for Nutraceutical industry companies, contact us at marketing@freestylesolutions.com.

In our latest Customer Success Story, we look at long time M.O.M. user, Byrd Cookie Company and how the introduction to M.O.M. Shipping Powered by Shippo has allowed them to ship out products in record time.

We show the two integrations and how they work well with one another, we also hear from Byrd Cookie themselves as they talk about the improvements on the shipping side of things since M.O.M. and Shippo began an impactful partnership.

Watch the webinar where Shippo joins us as we talk about our integration. You can also read about Byrd Cookie’s successes on their shipping process, right on the Shippo site. You can contact us at marketing@freestylesolutions.com, for a hard copy of the Success Story or any questions regarding the integration between the two.

JC Penney is one of the iconic retail brands in the United States and a place where most of us have shopped. The trouble facing retail giants has visited Penney’s and the past few years have not been kind to the giant with declining sales and store closures being frequent news.

The ship was righted somewhat by former CEO Marvin Ellison who has since moved on to Lowe’s and some triage has been practiced, helping stem the red ink.  But recently announced quarterly results have spurred analysts to downgrade the chain’s credit rating and the remainder of 2018 seems to be shaping up as challenging, to put it kindly. The situation is not as grave as what faces Sears and some positives are in place, but the downgraded credit rating will make it far more expensive for the next CEO to borrow the capital needed to chart a new direction.

This news continues what has been a trend of tough headwinds for some retailers while similar department stores like Macy’s, Kohl’s and Neiman Marcus have enjoyed better, if not spectacular results.

All of this makes us wonder how the financial situations of the broad spectrum of large retailers will affect the upcoming holiday season and how their profit and inventory challenges will affect the strategies of pure play eCommerce sellers. It is entirely possible that we will see aggressive pricing from JC Penney both in store and online as they look to move excess inventory in the 4^th qtr.  Will that be a winning strategy or just further triage?  How will smaller companies compete, that is question we will be studying.

For more insight into what lies ahead for JC Penney please visit here.

If you have questions or would like to share your thoughts, please leave a comment or contact us at marketing@freesytlesolutions.com.

Tax policy continues to be the single most discussed topic in the eCommerce industry and it is clear that our customers and prospects are spending considerable time reviewing their new tax collection and reporting tasks.

Our mission at Freestyle is help our customers understand their obligations and to explore the partnerships we have available within our solutions to help them comply with all the changes. The steps we have taken to inform them include the MOM focused webinar held on the August 9^th (recording here) and the Webinar we are holding with Avalara, one of our partners, on August 23^rd.

During the webinar Avalara will provide their thoughts on the SCOTUS decision and detail how their solution will help eCommerce companies to collect, report and comply with the coming tax changes.

To register for the webinar please visit here.

You may have recently received an email from Tony Kyberd, our President at Freestyle Software asking you to participate in a survey where we ask you to help us understand your day-to-day use of the product.

If you missed it, you can take a look at the survey to answer questions we have asked to better understand how we should go and map the future of Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) and its suite of products.

This feedback is valuable to us, as it will give us an idea of how you, our customer uses M.O.M. We will take the feedback you provide and combine it with what we find from industry trends, regulatory and security requirements, tickets entered in our help desk system, feedback from our trusted partners and other resources.

We thank you for taking the time to answer these questions and value your feedback. Feel free to reach out to me separately with any questions you have, or any additional feedback that you want to mention outside of the survey. If you would like to get a link to the survey, reach out to me or our marketing team at marketing@freestylesolutions.com.

With the recent Supreme Court decision on South Dakota v Wayfair, Freestyle Software has been working on solutions to help integrate these changes into the M.O.M. system.

First a quick recap on what happened, on June 21, 2018 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of South Dakota. What this means is that going forward, if you as a merchant accrue more than $100,000 in sales OR have 200 individual sales in the state per calendar year you will be required to collect and report on the state you have collected tax in. We expect that many states will enact their own laws and that the tax compliance burden facing eCommerce companies will continue to increase.

What we’re doing

By now you’re been thinking about that million-dollar question, what do I need to do and how will Freestyle help me?

We are working on three options for you and it is up to you the merchant to select the option that best suits your needs.

Option 1:

Import tax data via our API plugin – This will require you to be on version 8 or higher, and to use our API to import the tax rates for each state you do business in. This would then require you to export out the reporting required for you to submit to each state where you exceeded the threshold.

Option 2 (In Progress):

Get the tax rates in M.O.M. 10 – This will be available for version 10 only. We have worked with partners to grab the tax rates for each individual state and will now allow you to select the tax tables that you need. These can then be imported into M.O.M. directly. Reporting will still need to be done manually.

Option 3 (Currently Researching):

As we work on what’s next, we are researching possible integrations with Avalara, TaxJar and other popular tax tools to allow you to import tax calculations from M.O.M. into the system directly. This would require a subscription to one of the tax services.

On August 9, we will be holding our first Software for Life Office Hour Session, open to all current customers, where we can answer your questions on this topic and talk about our plans to support you on behalf of this landmark decision. Sign up today if you already haven’t.

Haven’t heard about Software for Life, or want to learn more? Contact you solutions specialist today, to learn about Office Hours and more with Software for Life. You can reach us at sales@freestylesolutions.com.