| Perlis Clothing - A New Orleans Tradition |
 Perlis Clothing is a tradition in New Orleans, Louisiana representing quality clothing and fine Southern service. Over twenty years ago they came to Smyth to meet their back office automation needs for their brick and mortar stores. As they expanded their business to the Internet, they found that their initial success needed the same quality of professional services to support their E-Commerce store. Having recently struggled through the pains of Hurricane Katrina, we asked Mike Sapera, CFO and Director of IT for Perlis to discuss how the Merchant Plus E-Commerce services helped him with his internet business. Smyth Retail is proud not only of the success of this website, but how it helps their core business and even the community of New Orleans.As a little history on our web site, we first began attempting to set up a web site in November of 1994 and actually began selling items online the next Christmas season. We have been selling online for more than ten years now. I have seen just about everything possible regarding online sales. Our site began as just an online catalog that people could look at and call to place an order. It has evolved into a full online store that will soon be linked and coordinated with our back office retail software. The site has gone through some periods of stagnancy and some periods of explosive growth. The last such explosive period for us was in 2004 when we switched to using the current software through Smyth Retail Systems. Over the past four years we have averaged sales increases in the online store of 44.55% per year. In our current fiscal year we are averaging an increase of almost 27% in spite of missing weeks of business due to our friend Hurricane Katrina! The online store will exceed some of our smaller stores in sales this fiscal year for the first time and the rent factor is so much more appealing!
We have used a number of different software providers over our period of time in the online business but none have been as easy to deal with as Smyth. And the Smyth software is by far the most user friendly we have used. Perlis has always used an outside company or service to make changes to the sites but since we switched to Smyth we have been able to bring that work back inside and save thousands of dollars per year.
Perlis is a very strong believer in direct marketing and we do not treat our online customers any differently. We send out marketing emails weekly and more often during the busy season. The Smyth software makes it much easier to capture customer information and saves a great deal of time and has eliminated a huge amount of duplication of efforts.
The web site has always been a marketing and communication tool for Perlis but that was never more evident than on August 29, 2005 and the period subsequent. On the day that Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the wonderful people at Smyth changed our web site to inform customers that we would be down for a period of time and put up a message that the best way to help people in New Orleans would be through a donation to the American Red Cross. The communication worked because even the people at the Red Cross acknowledged they had seen the message!
The web site was rapidly changed into a communication tool for our business rather than an online store. And when I say rapidly I mean within minutes! Janis Banda and Tim Smyth were always available to me and used a number of different and creative methods for people to communicate with Perlis. We used the web site to track down our employees who were spread out from Florida to Connecticut and Wyoming to Colorado! Janis set up an online form for employees to send us their temporary addresses. This was most appreciated by the employees because without this communication they would not have been able to get their payroll checks sent to them.
After Katrina was gone and we were able to return to our offices and stores, the web site has continued to change and evolve as our business changes and evolves. We have recently begun using the web site as a way for customers to communicate with us measurements and sizes for our formalwear rental and bridesmaids dress departments. Customers can go online and fill out an online form and reserve their tuxedos or dresses without having to come into the store. This is a great convenience for out of town customers.
All of the technology in the world is of no use to anyone if the people involved are problems to deal with. That is certainly not the case with Smyth Retail. Everyone involved is always willing to work with us on new projects to make the site even better and more useful to us and our customers. We are ecstatic with everything about our web store through Smyth Retail.
Perlis Clothing - A New Orleans Tradition! |