TPES: a study in Magento-influenced increase
When TPES (Toledo Physical Education Supply), founded by Thomas McNutt, opened for business 37 years ago, sales were limited to a catalog mailed out to school districts, Physical Education teachers, YMCAs, colleges and city park & recreation departments. The black and white catalog appealed to thrifty budget-minded buyers and sales were steady as school districts expanded their PE offerings and organized sports took root across America.
In 1994 McNutt bought Great Lakes Sports and his son, Steve McNutt joined the company
Steve took the business online in the late ’90s using what he calls a “canned, bare-bones eCommerce package that was menu driven.” It worked alright, says Steve, for the buyer who had a catalog in hand while placing their online order.
But Steve still hadn’t tapped into the retail customer. He began investigating better eCommerce programs when he learned of Magento and was referred to a local web design firm in Toledo. In Steve’s words, “It was a disaster.” Steve wasn’t going to give up on the program however and went back to Magento’s website where he found a list of Magento Partners. Unleaded Software’s work appealed to him.
Unleaded Software Inc., a Professional Partner with Varien’s Magento program, is headquartered in Denver, Colo. As part of Steve’s due diligence, he flew from Toledo to Denver to visit Unleaded Software’s operations in person. “I wasn’t going to make another mistake, especially with millions of online sales revenues at stake,” Steve adds. Unleaded’s expertise, client management skills, and design portfolio impressed Steve and the overhaul of the two websites followed in short order.
Unleaded Software upgraded both the Toledo Physical Education Supply (www.tpesonline.com) and Great Lakes Sports (www.greatlakessports.com) e-commerce websites to Magento, launching them Dec. 29, 2009. Unleaded Software also built two new unique designs for the websites.
Within just two weeks of launch, the average time spent on the website increased 25 percent, and average sale was is up 133 percent.
“The metrics are increasing; visitors are increasing,” says a pleased Steve McNutt.
Once Unleaded finalized two new web site designs, they used an import script to import more than 4,000 products to a multi-store Magento installation. Products are common between the two sites.
Aaron Spear, Unleaded Software Web Developer & Designer, led the team implementing Magento into both sites. “By utilizing Magento's multi store functionality I was able to use a single template for both stores in most cases. This reduced the development time dramatically and allows for much quicker updates. With the simple yet bold designs, combined with the use of jQuery, I was able to develop a very flexible and customized eCommerce solution for our client."
The client is able to manage both stores, process orders and coordinate shipping from both websites through one Magento dashboard. Additionally, Unleaded made more prominent the featured, brand new and closeout products on the website’s home page, thereby increasing sales in those areas. Unleaded also employed Magento’s promotion code functionality to take advantage of the client’s print catalog offers.
The result is two new websites, based on Magento, that offer the client easier management and increased sales.
For information on this project and other Magento releases, contact Unleaded Software at 720-221-7126 or email president Jarod Clark at jarod@unleadedsoftware.com.