Tech Talk: Handbag Retailer Deploys DIY Tech

By Elizabeth Wasserman

An online designer handbag retailer based in Boston finds that building their own website and customizing features better attracts customers -- and gets them to place orders.

LunaBoston.com, a Boston-based handbag retailer, launched in 2004 and now operates a storefront and a Web-based business. By using a do-it-yourself website design, CIO Alex McCollom tells IncTechnology.com that the company was able to customize features -- such as creating a Touch & Feel Meter to give visitors a sense of the texture of each bag -- and better serve customers.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What is LunaBoston?

Alex McCollom: LunaBoston is in its fifth year. It's an accessory retailer, focusing almost entirely on handbags. We started out with emerging and up and coming designers. Not Louis Vuitton, but names more along the lines of Rebecca Minkoff and Kooba. When we started, this was a small industry. But now the big boys have caught on with these brands and so it's more competitive. We have a store front in Boston but we're also an e-commerce company. We currently have six employees.

Wasserman: How did you build your website?

McCollom: We built it ourselves. If you're a retailer and you want to do business on the Internet, you have to have good inventory control practices. If you're going to sell something, you have to make sure you have it in stock. There were no off-the-shelf packages that could do inventory management and put in the customizations features that we needed. One of our big customer services is that we will deduct 50 percent off the price of a bag if the one you wanted wasn't in stock. If you can't control your inventory when you get a nice big Black Friday, you're going to have a lot of upset customers. We not only built a website but we also developed our point of sale system, a process for getting the product into inventory, and managing customer lists.

Wasserman: What's the most important thing a small business should know about building a DIY website?

McCollom: It's expensive but you will get that money back in flexibility. You should know that it's going to cost you more to build it yourself than to use an off-the-shelf system, but you will get that back in terms of what you're able to do. If you want to run a promotion for buy one/get one free, you can. If you bought a program and they don't support that, you're up a creek. The other thing they should know is that it never ends. The development process becomes your business. That becomes a priority in terms of resources. Do we have enough time to put certain features in before Christmas hits? If you simply bought off the shelf, you're stuck with that you got. But the possibilities are endless when you do it yourself.

Wasserman: In fairness to other business owners, you've got a background in technology.

McCollom: That's right. For my day job, I'm an IT infrastructure manager. It's not really for everybody. You need that technical background. You have to be able to host the website. You have to know the hardware side of things, about security implementations, etc. You're storing people's credit card information so you have to understand what the regulations are regarding that.

Wasserman: What type of unique features have you been able to build into your website?

McCollom: We have the Touch and Feel Meter. For any e-commerce site, what you're trying to do is get the customer as close to the product as you can. In the store, you can tell so much more about the product. You can touch it and feel it. We came up with the Touch and Feel Meter so that you can understand the texture of the bag. You can click and get that information for any product. We're looking at features for our next release that will allow you to match a handbag with an outfit to see if this will go with that you wear. We're also looking at new ways of comparing products quickly. A customer will come through and look at 50 bags in 20 minutes. How do you remember and keep track of what you liked and what you didn't like? We want to enable you to keep track of what you looked at using comparison tools.

Wasserman: Have you seen any return on investment?

McCollom: It's hard to say what the ROI is on all these little pieces. You cant' calculate ahead of time if you know cost you in labor is $10,000 to develop a new product comparison tool, it's hard to say when you get that back. It's another thing to draw traffic. .It's another thing that people will remember you by and make them come back instead of going to someone else.