Escalate Retail

www.escalateretail.com/products/


Charlene Smith
888-777-6811 x4233
csmith@escalate.com

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Case Study: Bud K Worldwide, Inc.

Escalate takes pride in its broad array of Direct Commerce customers, including newly joined Bud K Worldwide.  The 18-year-old company’s product line has always been devoted to collectors and users of traditional and fantasy knives and swords. Over the past few years, Bud K has expanded its line to include gothic and historical home displays and accessories, jewelry and apparel. Bud K’s business model is both B2B and B2C via catalog and on-line channels, with one brick and mortar location alongside the corporate office. In 2006, Bud K Worldwide brought Gavin Galtere on board as Executive Director of IT with the task of migrating the company from its existing IBM-based catalog and order management system to the Ecometry Open Systems SQL platform. Galtere’s role has since expanded to VP of e-Commerce and IT, with added responsibility for e-Commerce operations, including affiliate marketing, SEO, PPC (paid search), and e-mail marketing.

Expressing the benefits of Ecometry’s Systems Manager Customer Service module, Galtere noted the module’s value for improving call center efficiencies. “The graphical user interface is intuitive and helps manage the call flow," he says. "We also employ the up-sell functionality, which allows our customer care representatives to present our products more professionally and ultimately increase our sales. With the call reason codes, we are able to better track our customers’ requests, identify trends and make other business functionalities aware of potential problems.”

Galtere detailed Ecometry’s role in Bud K’s business operations:

• Marketing: “Ecometry’s reporting has given us better visibility into our list management and prospecting profitability. It’s also improved our ability to equate lifetime value with prospecting. We are using the auto promotion functionality to better communicate with our prospective B2B customers, which we believe will lower our marketing costs and improve our sales in these divisions.”
• Merchandising/Planning: “Ecometry has helped us increase our inventory turns and spot trends early enough in the catalog life cycle to avoid excessive back orders.”
• Fulfillment: “We use functions such as the picker/packer productivity and pick velocity to help us lay out our warehouse and redesign our process flows, ultimately increasing productivity.”
• IT: “With visibility into the database, trouble shooting issues has been far easier than with an MPE platform.”

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“At the end of the day, it’s all about our customers,” said Galtere. “We’re glad to work with a company that shares Bud K’s philosophy and helps us run our business more efficiently. No implementation is going to be wrinkle-free or without modifications, but Escalate has been great in working with us to best utilize the software for our company.”

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