Carl Prindle, Founder & CEO More and more retailers are adopting cloud ecommerce platforms—not just for their performance, efficiency, and lower costs, but also because their agility allows retailers to stay ahead of the curve as the digital landscape rapidly evolves.
At the same time, most cloud ecommerce platforms (such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify) were built as “one-size-fits-all” solutions for a broad range of retail categories, typically retailers who sell relatively simple, lower priced, UPS-able items. Out of the box, these “horizontal” platforms are powerful tools for these types of retailers. But what about retailers whose businesses involve more complex shopping experiences?
Blueport Commerce is a premier example of a cloud ecommerce platform that takes the benefits of a cloud solution and—applying a deep understanding of one complex vertical—offers furniture retailers a “vertical” solution tailored to their unique challenges. Blueport is used by the largest furniture retailers in North America to run their omnichannel websites, offer world-class furniture shopping experiences, and drive sales online and in-stores. In addition to their cloud ecommerce platform, Blueport offers on-demand ecommerce expertise to ensure retailers launch a best-in-class website on the platform, and have the ongoing resources to keep them that way.
By providing furniture-focused solutions, Blueport has made staying ahead of the ecommerce curve possible for their clients. On their custom, bespoke websites, Blueport-powered retailers get extensive furniture ecommerce features “out of the box”, allowing them to immediately drive revenue across all channels. Critically, Blueport’s technology seamlessly integrates with a retailer’s ERP system and their brick-and-mortar locations to ensure real-time data online— like local pricing, delivery information or store inventory— matches a shopper ’s local store.
Blueport’s Cloud Ecommerce Platform is a ‘vertical’ solution tailored to furniture’s unique business and challenges, enabling them to drive omnichannel sales and stay ahead of the ecommerce curve
What’s more, Blueport’s features and technology provide furniture retailers unprecedented sales and marketing data to help clients individualize and tailor the furniture shopping experience. Blueport’s patented Store-Sync, for example, is a cart syncing tool that allows shoppers to move seamlessly back and forth between channels. Shoppers can make store appointments to “touch and feel” their online carts. Salespeople can create in-store carts that shoppers can consider and purchase from home. For retailers, Store-Sync tracks critical marketing, sales attribution, and behavioral insights to enhance customer engagement and improve marketing effectiveness.
“While we often talk about ecommerce as a convenience play—the ability to purchase outside the store—in reality, it’s a reimagining of the entire retail sales and marketing process, particularly in complex, big-ticket categories like furniture,” says Carl Prindle, Blueport Founder and CEO. “Our technology allows retailers to deeply understand their shoppers, and, for the first time, tailor their offerings and communicate them in a way that meets shoppers’ needs in a personal, compelling, and easy way.”
As ecommerce evolves beyond simple “click-pick-ship” categories, we expect generic, horizontal cloud ecommerce platforms to struggle in adapting to new and unique online verticals. By unlocking the power of a vertical cloud solution in a category as complicated as furniture retail, Blueport is not only providing a best in class solution for furniture—they may well be pioneering the next wave in the evolution of ecommerce platforms.
