By Ruth Richter • July 17, 2019
Summer heralds the time for vacations and getting away. While a recent poll states that 1 in 4 Americans are skipping a summer vacation this year, that doesn’t mean that shorter trips to the beach, a big picnic, or even camping are off the radar. The rising popularity of the “stay-cation” means that many Americans are finding unique ways to get away without having to go so far away. Here’s how several ecommerce businesses are gearing up to help stay-cationers (and regular vacationers, too!) enjoy some quality time outdoors this summer.
GCI Outdoor
Thirteen years ago, a man named Dan Grace asked, “Why isn’t there a chair for this?” With the help of his engineering background, outdoorsman Grace created the Everywhere Chair® that allows outdoor enthusiasts of all sorts to sit securely on any type of terrain with the use of an adjustable strap and buckle system. Two years later, Grace partnered with Jeffrey Polke, an expert in sales, marketing, and retail, and GCI Outdoor grew in product innovations and in customer service.
What began as a chair design to answer a deceptively simple question has grown into an empire of outdoor and waterside seating options. GCI’s chairs and folding tables are available online through their ecommerce site powered by WooCommerce. Not only can the general customer visit the site and order what they want, but dealers can also log in to place orders at their own individual rates. That level of pricing customization is possible for GCI because they chose to connect their Sage 100 system and their ecommerce platform via IN-SYNCH® by ROI Consulting. With IN-SYNCH, their WooCommerce site is automatically integrated to pull pricing based on dealer log in, while also pushing inventory information bidirectionally between ERP, WMS, and ecommerce systems. With IN-SYNCH, GCI can certainly prop its feet up and relax, trusting in accurate and integrated data.
Loll Designs
Loll Designs
describes itself as “outdoor furniture for the modern lollygagger.” Their durable, all-weather outdoor furniture and accessories come in a plethora of styles in a wide range of colors to suit every kind of back porch enthusiast. On top of that, all their furniture is made from recycled plastic, namely single-use milk jugs, and remains 100 percent recyclable to someday transform into something else. Loll uses about 400 milk jugs per chair and is proud to have supported lollygagging around America since 2007.
All Loll products are made to order, which eliminates waste, but certainly complicates the ecommerce process when the time between clicking purchase and furniture arrival can be close to two months. With all the growth Loll has experienced in recent years, they’re putting more power behind their production and shipping, and using IN-SYNCH to keep the right data flowing to the right places. With IN-SYNCH integrating Loll’s Sage 100 and WooCommerce platforms, orders can be received and queued up, and when it’s finally time to ship, Loll is confident that no order has slipped through the cracks due to lead time, and customers receive their shipping information as soon as their new furniture is ready to go.
Goal Zero
It’s nice to get away from it all, including getting away from the barrage of texts, calls, and emails from work when you’re supposed to be on vacation. But sometimes we still need to plug in when we’re in a place that doesn’t have outlets or power lines. Goal Zero founder Robert Workman first stepped into his mission to bring light and power through portable solar products in the Congo in 2007. When he realized that portable solar products were needed everywhere, not just third world countries, he got a team together to create the first line of Goal Zero reliable portable solar power products. Goal Zero products have helped those during natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy and brings light and power to villages in the Congo, Indonesia, Haiti, and beyond.
This humanitarian company has a lot of product to track, especially when they run “You Buy One, We Give One” campaigns to supply solar power modules to areas hit hard by natural disasters. With IN-SYNCH, they can be confident that the right information is triggered in their systems to ship one product to a customer and remove a second from inventory to ship out to areas in need. IN-SYNCH also keeps Amazon purchases accounted for by easily integrating the third-party cart to Goal Zero’s Sage 100 system for lightning fast data exchange. Using IN-SYNCH, Goal Zero can trust that they have the data they need to keep bringing light and power to the world.
Get Some Data R&R With ROI
Whether you’re planning to get away from it all by flying across the world or just driving a few towns over to the campground or beach, if you have IN-SYNCH integration with your Sage 100 systems, you can feel confident that business will go on as usual while you’re stretched out sunning yourself on a hillside. ROI Consulting specializes in customizing integration solutions that manage complex data situations, so you don’t have to.
Ready to take a break from your old processes? See how IN-SYNCH by ROI Consulting can integrate your data and give your team a well-deserved break. Contact us here or call 403-934-2223, 1.
