Voyten Electric is an excellent example of a company that saw an e-store as an opportunity in their market, of which competitors were not taking advantage. The development of an e-store has put Voyten ahead of the competition while attracting new markets to an already successful business model. Voyten’s e-store website is www.voytenelectric.com.
Profile
Located in Franklin PA, Voyten Electric is an industry leader in the refurbishment and reselling of electrical equipment. Primarily targeting manufacturers, clients include Eaton Corporation and Siemens who contract them to deconstruct electrical components like circuit breakers and devices. They are a global business with customers located in several countries across the globe. Even Voyten’s competition sources them for the hard-to-find and obsolete electrical components. Voyten’s e-store, however, targets more end users who are looking for custom builds from reconditioned, obsolete industrial equipment.
Voyten has been in business for over 50 years with 20-25 employees and approximately $3 million sales. Mike Nightengale leads this family owned business. His vision of a new online venture has aided in the company’s success and improved growth potential. Voyten is also a founder of PEARL an organization for responsible recycling of electronic products. Voyten’s website is www.voyten.com.
In 2008 Voyten Electric identified e-commerce as a significant step in its corporate growth strategy and began putting plans into action. Voyten first purchased a warehouse to establish the fulfillment center inventory of the surplus electrical components. Eli, whose background includes starting as an e-marketing apprentice, now handles more of the marketing and website operation, while Logan handles warehouse management, quoting and direct sales. Logan converses more with customer’s to better understand their needs. Accordingly, he has become quite fluent with the components for sale and the installations they go in, and can implement cross selling strategies.
Eli and Logan have spent significant time refining the warehouse-to-site processes. These processes have continually evolved to best align the processes of the warehouse to the processes of adding and adjusting product on the site, enabling them to cross-train their positions to manage their work more effectively.
Voyten has an in-house sales team for the bricks and mortar component of the business and a separate team, consisting of Eli and Logan, to manage the e-store operations. There is not an official marketing department. Though these groups have different functions, they are not separate entities, just different divisions. The sales team and the e-store team work collaboratively on the overall marketing plan of the company, sharing available resources.
Voyten has implemented a mixed media marketing approach. E-marketing has become its primary marketing approach, but Voyten also advertises in industry periodicals occasionally. They do not send direct mail or engage in social media. Voyten has not incorporated multimedia into their mix, but plans to do so in the near future. They find an even distribution of orders originating from the Internet, fax and telephone. Sales are derived primarily through direct sales, referrals and relationships.
Voyten’s website is hosted by a third party provider, while the platform is managed and updated internally. The e-store has been in operation since September 2009. Initially sales started out slow but over time and with more experience in driving business online, the e-store has proven to be a success with monthly sales growth averaging 15-30%, with continued strong growth trends on the horizon for 2012.
Voyten’s website receives substantial traffic and they are seeing a noticeable shift from their traditional customers who are now visiting the e-store. The e-store has helped Voyten attract new customers and new markets. The global reach of the e-Store has enabled Voyten to sell “long tail” items more economically. Additionally, Voyten’s e-store has facilitated the movement of their vast inventory and better customer service. Voyten tries new techniques with their e-store, such as letting customers “make an offer.” This approach attracts new customers by letting them suggest a price for the product they want to purchase.
Voyten recognizes the importance of effectively optimizing their website for search. They actively engage in SEO strategies, making website changes as frequently as possible. They find that most of their keywords rank organically in the top five spots. If their keywords consistently remain high, they do not include these keywords in their pay per click account.
Voyten uses Google Adwords but only for products that need to be competitive. PPC accounts are monitored constantly, averaging about three to four during the week. They manage over five thousand PPC keywords, including part numbers. Voyten uses Google Analytics and find that it is an extremely useful tool to compare web trends and customer data.
Voyten started building their email subscriber list which grew 300% in the first year. Currently, the primary goal of their email marketing is relationship building and to maintain top of mind awareness so when one of their customers has need and is sourcing electrical components, they will be the preferred source. Their email marketing list is consists mostly of previous customers and vendors.
As a result of a combination of marketing efforts, sales continue to climb for this company.
Challenges and Lessons
• Because of the flexibility of an e-store,
trial and error is a continuing process for Voyten.
• Offering products that competitors are
unable to, has helped Voyten become
the recognized name in the industry for
electrical components.
• Tracking customer activity is a key activity
and Voyten is considering a CRM strategy
to improve monitoring the flow of business.
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