|
Watts Their Line
BY BETH NEGUS VIVEIROS
Direct, Oct 1, 2002
Everyone, Topbulb CEO Philip Bonello is fond of saying, has
"a goofy light bulb problem" — a lamp in his or
her home or office that requires some sort of odd replacement
bulb which is nearly impossible to find.
With over 3,500 items in its inventory ranging in price from
29 cents to $700, this is exactly the sort of need the over-70-year-old
catalog caters to fill. Of course, finding customers with pressing
light bulb needs when they need the product has never been easy.
Think about it: How many lists of "affluent homeowners or
upscale businesses with burned-out lamps" have you seen for
rent lately?
"It was a non-starter to mail to consumers," says Bonello,
noting that in the past, the company hadn't mailed many of the
1 million pieces it sends annually beyond its core vertical business-to-business
markets.
The Internet has eased East Chicago, IN-based Topbulb's prospecting
burden considerably. In the last year alone, search engine placements
and other online promotions have helped the company increase the
consumer share of its business to 25%, up from only 3% a year
ago.
"We call our product the hardest one to market but the easiest
to sell," says Bonello. "When people find us and know
we have [what they need], they almost always buy. But finding
them and them finding us is the challenge."
The company's online business is growing 1% to 2% per month,
and currently comprises about 30% of Topbulb's sales overall.
Thirty-five percent of the Web site buyers are new customers,
and about half of those are consumers, says Brian Brown, marketing
coordinator and Web site manager. The site (www.topbulb.com),
which has been up in its current form for about two years, gets
about 27,000 visitors a week.
Before Topbulb had a Web site, it mailed nearly 2 million catalogs
and other pieces annually. Today, says director of marketing Tracy
Meyer, besides a 68-page standard-format general catalog that
covers the bulk of the product line, "Slim Jim" format
books catering to niche segments like education, healthcare, automotive,
safety and consumers are also sent out.
The company maintains one Web site for both consumer and B-to-B
customers. The site, which stimulates catalog requests in addition
to product sales, was originally built for business customers,
who typically knew the code of the product they wanted and didn't
want — or need — to browse the site. As more consumers
started visiting, Topbulb made the interface more user-friendly
for the teeming masses, says Bonello.
Currently, the most popular products online and off are photographic
and projector oriented, such as lights for LCD projectors. The
company sees large retailers such as OfficeMax and Home Depot
as competitors, as well as other niche players like Bulbtronics
and small companies that buy bulbs in bulk and market to local
retailers. "They don't have the breadth of service and reach,
but they're still going after the same dollars," says Bonello.
Despite its online success, the company isn't pushing print catalog
customers to convert into online-only shoppers.
"The best buyers are the people who speak to us, where we
have more interaction and can build a rapport and have better
opportunities to upsell and explore needs and solve problems,"
says Bonello. "We, like I think a lot of catalogers, discovered
that people spend less when they're shopping on the Web than they
do if they're talking to a person. We encourage anybody who visits
our site to call."
Indeed, the company's phone number is included on every Web and
print catalog page, as phone orders are usually 15% to 20% higher
than ones from the Web. The in-house phone reps receive a few
weeks' training before they go "live," including reviewing
the catalog listings, working in the warehouse and monitoring
an experienced representative on the phone.
"We also meet every other week to see what we can do to
be ‘best of breed’ in supplying good customer service,"
says Bonello, who was previously with Metromail for 12 years.
One problem the 10 full-time reps run into is that customers
calling in sometimes don't know exactly what they need, because
they might just have a fragment or piece of an old bulb. Reps
are trained to ask questions like whether a lamp has any identifying
marks on the base, the physical dimensions of the lamp and what
the filament looks like. To further help consumers, two pages
in the front of the print catalog are devoted to a glossary of
lamp terminology and illustrations of various bulb shapes and
bases labeled by the corresponding code or name.
Topbulb is busiest in the third and fourth quarters, with business
fueled not only by the education market's need for products like
general lighting and audiovisual bulbs, but by the fact that in
North America, the days get shorter in the fall so there's a greater
need for the product.
About 30% of the nearly 100,000 names on Topbulb's house file
are multi-time buyers, says Meyer. Compared with many other
catalogers, the company has a long period for what it considers
"active" buyers — 36 to 38 months. Customers may
be dormant for quite a while, but then come back every few years
to replace bulbs on a regular basis. To keep Topbulb in their
mind, the cataloger does supplemental mailings in addition to
its catalog, including thank-you notes, special sale notices and
promotions for special sales or holiday products.
"I think customer retention is more important to us than
many other catalogers," says Bonello. "[Because our
customers] are so hard to find, retention becomes all the more
imperative."
There is some B-to-B/consumer customer crossover. After all,
business people buying bulbs for their offices do go to homes
with lighting needs at night. But while some customers use the
print catalog as a reference tool, cross-sell opportunities are
minimal because the book — page after page of listings of
bulb ordering codes broken down by volts, amps and cost —
isn't really browsable.
"If you're buying a light bulb for doing ear exams, you're
not exactly interested in something for your porch," says
Bonello. "[But] if we get to speak with someone, we can suggest
‘Do you need bug lights, or how's your garage being lighted?"
Light bulbs are "low involvement and certainly not a sexy
product," he says. People take light bulbs for granted, and
don't think about the product until it stops working. "It's
technology that people don't consider technology."
Because people don't generally give light bulbs a lot of forethought,
the company ships a lot of rush orders. "Having inventory
is often the key to making a sale or not making a sale,"
says Bonello. Topbulb does its own fulfillment, says Meyer,
and 98% of orders are shipped on the same day they are ordered.
E-mail has helped create a bit more involvement to get consumers
thinking about their lighting needs. Meyer, who had been with
Sears before joining Topbulb about 18 months ago, says the company
e-mails both retention and sales messages to its customer file,
including updates on new products and safety information on ways
to protect pets or children from electrical dangers.
"It gets them more involved in the lighting process,"
she says.
Premiums are also used not so much as an incentive to buy but
as a "thank you" to consumers. The current catalog offers
a coupon for a free pint of Haagen-Dazs with any order of $100
or more. Other premiums have included toy trucks and note pads
featuring the "Bulb Dude" character created by local
artist Bruce Hawkins when the company changed the name it markets
under from Gray Supply to Topbulb three years ago.
The company started life selling radio and TV tubes, but morphed
into a bulb supplier. The business has been catalog-driven for
the last 20 years, and backed by venture capital from Northbrook,
IL-based Sterling Capital for some 15 years. Bonello hopes Topbulb
will keep taking advantage of "the treasure trove of marketing
data" offered by online marketing opportunities.
For example, the Web has helped the company discover bulb niches
it didn't know existed. It sold black lights to dentists for years
for color curing, but the product was never a big seller. As e-commerce
grew, Topbulb saw requests for black lights rise. The company
repositioned the product on its site and started selling many
more, not only to consumers for decorations but to car enthusiasts
who light the underside of their vehicles with the purple lights
and businesses that use them to check ID passes for security purposes.
"We let the market define some of the opportunities for
us," he says.
© 2002, PRIMEDIA Business
Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved. This article is
protected by United States copyright and other intellectual property
laws and may not be reproduced, rewritten, distributed, redisseminated,
transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast, directly or indirectly,
in any medium without the prior written permission of PRIMEDIA
Business Magazines & Media Inc.
Topbulb.com, the source for all your light bulbs, including
projector bulbs, dental/medical equipment bulbs, compact fluorescents,
full-spectrum, halogen, xenon, miniature lighting from GE, Osram
Sylvania, Philips, Ushio and more for use in Kodak, Sony and Proxima
equipment.
Need
help? We're just a phone call away — 1-866-867-2852.
|
