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Switching online One Call, an online shopping site based in Spokane, carves out growing market share

Anyone shopping
for home
electronics toys
like DVD players
or camcorders
knows the retail
competition is
fierce.

Tom Sowa
The Spokesman-Review Staff writer

Big dealers like
Circuit City, Best
Buy and even
Radio Shack are
looking for any advantage to lure customers into their
stores.

Shoppers now confront massive displays, flashy
promos and loud music that hawk the latest in
consumer electronics merchandise.

The online home-electronics market has its own
version of that competition; it may not be as gaudy,
but it’s just as intense.

Online shoppers confront a whole different pitch, and
mostly from different companies than those in the
retail electronics business.

Web sites for companies like J&R Music, AbT
Electronics and others often feature 20 or 30
products per page. Their highly graphic click-through
menus, pricing options and customized shopping
carts create an online candy store for gadget
hounds.

Companies that are doing well in the online market,
like Spokane’s One Call.com, have learned a few
lessons about e-commerce and marketing.

To tweak a common refrain, they keep it simple but
not stupid.

Combining loads of pictures and graphics with
easy-to-follow menu choices, One Call has adopted a
successful e-commerce model: help shoppers get as
much information as they need without being
intrusive or pesky.

One Call is the online division of Huppin’s Photo,
Hi-Fi and Video, the established, privately owned
retail store in downtown Spokane.

Since its launch in 1994, One Call has easily become
Spokane’s most successful e-commerce Web site. It
concentrates on quality video and audio equipment,
especially newer products.

"We’ve doubled our business at One Call every three
years," said Huppin’s president Murray Huppin.

Huppin, who started One Call with modest
expectations, has come to view the online site as a
major way to reach customers nationwide.

"You need to find a way to personalize an impersonal
shopping experience."

After a sales slump following Sept. 11, business has
picked up on One Call. Huppin said the site
generates about 300 online sales per day, but he
declined to reveal total revenue for either One Call or
Huppin’s Photo.

More than 80 percent of One Call’s purchases come
from residents in California, New York and Texas.
Like other e-commerce sites, One Call doesn’t
charge sales tax, except for purchases by
Washington residents.

Even that small drawback didn’t stop Spokane Valley
resident Mike Winebarger from shopping at One Call
recently.

Winebarger, a laid off Kaiser Trentwood worker, was
shopping for a high-end woofer for his home stereo.
He found the model he wanted through One Call,
then bought it for $550.

He knew One Call was associated with Huppin’s and
he figured he could trust a company basically across
town.

Winebarger isn’t too unlike most online
home-electronics consumers. He’ll shop for good
deals on items in the modest to mid-priced range.
When he covets something more expensive, he
prefers to make an in-store purchase.

Even after his pleasant One Call experience,
Winebarger ended up buying a high-end TV from
one of Huppins’ competitors, a chain retailer on North
Division.

"I don’t like going to the Huppin’s store. It’s small. I’d
prefer a larger place, with plenty of parking,"
Winebarger said.

Though no organization tracks total sales by
e-commerce companies, the home electronics
industry is big business. Total U.S. sales of home
video systems, cameras and audio systems totaled
$24.4 billion in 2000, the most recent year for which
statistics are available.’

By some industry measures, One Call is in the top 10
among consumer-electronics sites in terms of annual
sales. It’s one of the top-rated home-electronics sites
at BizRate, a popular Web survey company.

In the past year, as the dot-com crash took effect,
many similar sites offering comparable products fell
by the wayside.

Oregon Camera, a Portland-based company with a
long history, was sold to national chain
RitzCameras.com.

And 800.com, also based in Portland, folded in the
tech slump, with Circuit City buying its customer lists.

The survivors, said Huppin, are companies that
already had a retail store, or started as mail-order
operations, like Crutchfield.com, an East Coast
electronics retailer.

When One Call was launched in 1994, company
owners tried to downplay the online site’s existence.
At the time, the logic was that online shopping could
erode the retail store’s sales.

By 1998, the opposite had occurred. The retail store
enjoyed continued revenue growth, while One Call
boomed and prospered.

Today, in fact, One Call generates about 80 percent
of total sales for the company, with the retail store
only accounting for 20 percent, said Huppin.

Each operation has a different sales team, but
accountants and a few administrative positions are
shared.

One key difference is that the 17 sales and customer
service reps for One Call share a team bonus
system. The incentive is toward sales without
creating a system that pits one rep against another in
the office.

The retail store, which employs about 20 sales
people, uses incentives that allow for individual
performance bonuses.

The One Call staff has its own office on the fourth
floor of the U.S. Bank Building, a block away from
Huppins’ downtown store on West Main.

One Call stays open 360 days a year, offering live
phone help from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Friday and
from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekends.

Each day, One Call’s sales agents either process
completed orders or answer phone questions from
customers.

Huppin said he had to be careful not to lose sight of
the company’s chief audience — mostly male
customers who love their home gear and are willing
to spend for the newest gizmos.

At one time, One Call considered adding laptops and
personal digital assistants or MP3 players. Huppin
held back, realizing that one of the company’s
strengths was its core focus on high-quality
camcorders, digital cameras, home-theater systems,
DVDs and audio gear.

Price is important, but it’s not the main feature that
wins customer loyalty, said Huppin.

"In fact, we don’t offer the lowest prices on some
items. We try to compete on service and customer
satisfaction."

Like other successful e-commerce companies, One
Call gives shoppers quick access to someone who
can help with shopping decisions. Each page on the
Web site showcases an 800 number; if someone
calls it, they reach a real person, not a recording or
automated system.

Huppin and his One Call staff agree that the
e-commerce site does best by not trying to be too
fancy.

At one time, One Call thought about adding an online
build-your-home-theater feature.

"We didn’t have the technology available five years
ago to offer that feature," said Huppin. Now he’s not
sure customers really need it anyway.

Like other online retailers, One Call also tried placing
banner advertisements on other Web sites. Those
ads didn’t generate significant sales, he said.

Huppin is not interested in adding bells and whistles
that try to determine what online customers want
based on past visits to the One Call site.

He’s visited sites like Amazon.com that offer pop-up
messages like: "Hello, Murray Huppin, welcome back.
We think you’d be interested in the following new
items."

Said Huppin: "I don’t think that experience is
personalized. To me it’s creepy."

Shoppers at One Call see the same pages and
information, whether they are first-time visitors or
veterans, said David Keith, information technology
manager for One Call.

"We’ve worked very hard on building our own (Web)
system," said Keith. "Our site is very dynamic, and
we’re constantly modifying it on the back end.

"One thing we’ve learned is that users really like how
easy it is to find information about products."

Business writer Tom Sowa can be reached at (509)
459-5492 or by e-mail at [email protected].

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=060202&ID=s1157326&cat=section.business

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