Rungreen Mows Down the Competition with 3dcart

Paul, you’ve been with 3dcart awhile, could you tell us where Rungreen started and give us some background?

I took over the site from a John Deere dealership that had been very proactive in moving to online sales- and was in fact online before John Deere itself. From there it was revamped after being sold to another dealership, and the rest is history.

Did you try any other shopping carts before settling on 3dcart?

We came to 3dcart after moving from Monstercommerce, after careful selection and trials of other carts. We’d had only one cart- Monstercommerce.

How have sales been ?

Sales in the past year are up roughly 10% in the last year and 20% in the last 3 months.

Thats quite an increase!  What are some of your current e-commerce goals?

Our goal is always to expand our product line, bring in new customers, and possibly launch more 3dcart sites with related products.

Speaking of products, I was quite surprised to see the selection of John Deere branded merchandise you sell. You seem to have everything BUT tractors. Are there any products that you like in particular?

Our favorite product in the database could be several- but I’m impartial to the John Deere Crib Bedding Set- it’s unique and we had been asking about it for years before it came about.

What do you like best about 3dcart?

The thing I like best about 3Dcart is ease of use. Even though you can choose to use configurable options, anyone- and I mean anyone- can use their software. It has just as many features as other much pricier solutions, and yet has as much as we need to do a booming business.

You say that you were with Monstercommerce before, how has 3dcart changed your business?

I would definitely say that 3dcart has boosted our business. This is most noticeable in Search Engine Optimization. We jumped up in search engines as soon as we joined 3dcart.

We have recommended, and had several others switch or start with 3dcart. If they like our site, and want something easy, we tell them- and they are always surprised at how little it can cost.

Paul, thank you for taking the time to sit down with us. It’s my pleasure to award you with the 3dcart Excellence in Ecommerce award for May2010.

Until June 1st, our readers can use the code return at rungreen.com and save 5%!

Our congratulations and best wishes to the folks at www.lamaisongourmet.net for launching their e-commerce store, powered by 3dcart!

“Your online wine merchant, a source for small wine releases from California. We are proud to showcase our great selection of wines and love sharing our passion for wine with you. So to make your wine experience even more memorable, we promise to offer you the finest quality of wines at the best value. You’ll enjoy each sip, from the first to the last! Note that each product page has a review section, and we would appreciate comments about your wine tasting”

We love getting letters like this:

Robb,

On behalf of all of us at Field’s Fabrics I would like to thank you and the support team for the great service and help in getting our store set up. I have been looking and hoping to find something like your service for years. I am so impressed with all the control we have over our site and everything you have thought of to make the cart easy to work with, not only to build but to take the orders now that it is up and running.

~Rick Veldman
Field’s Fabrics
www.fieldsfabrics.com

Cobwebcorner.com Crafts Their Success with 3dCart

This month, we had the privilege of speaking with one of our longtime customers, Carla Ekman from Cobwebcorner.com.

Carla, you’re no stranger to selling online, could you provide us with some background on your business?

In the late 90’s I caught the ‘Beanie Baby’ craze at the same time that the internet was getting popular. I started Cobweb Corner as a hobby but quickly caught entrepreneur fever. Around 2003 I became serious about starting my own business and working out of my home. Looking for something that was interesting to me, easy to store, and easy to ship – I settled on cross stitch books. At first I purchased large used collections on EBay and resold them, then I moved on to purchasing entire inventories from stores that had gone out of business, and reselling the inventory at a discount to my customers.

Around 2003 my husband and I were faced with the fact that our daughter was growing out of day care options and I was increasingly more interested in my own business than I was in my ‘real’ job as a software engineer writing and supporting databases used by over 1,000 engineers for a major International corporation. With my husband’s support I left my career of 19 years and set up a  full time business. At the same time I started creating jewelry and added that to my online inventory.

It sounds like you’ve really had a lot of experience and knew what you wanted. How did you discover 3dCart?

When I first started my business I used my skills as a database programmer to create my own website and write my own limited shopping cart. Over the years my business grew and I had difficulty keeping up with the program changes I needed in addition to designing jewelry, maintaining inventory and processing orders.

Also – I wanted to start offering my customers features that represented a ‘real’ store such as rewards points, discounts, featured items etc. etc.

The task of choosing a shopping cart was overwhelming. At first, I wrote my own and used some very dependable basic carts that allowed HTML to be added to my site to create a shopping cart. While these were very low cost and worked great – they didn’t have near the feature set I needed to move my store forward. After months of searching and trying demo versions I settled on 3dCart. With my database background the setup was very intuitive. I was able to create my own import routines and had my entire inventory set up and my new store was up and running in under 2 weeks.

Any features that you like the most?

The ease of setting up sales and specials via the promotion manager.

How did 3dCart assist you with making your business more successful?

It has provided me with a way to appear much more professional to my customers. It ‘legitimizes’ my business through its features, security and appearance so that a new customer doesn’t come in and say – “Oh, this is a one-person mom and pop shop” – Many of my customers don’t know that I am the sole employee and I think a lot of that is due to having a full-featured store.

"3dCart is committed to staying around and constantly improving what they offer"

Last year has been rough on a lot of merchants, how did you fare? What did you do to weather the storm?

When I first started my business my sales increased steadily every year and I did very well for the type of business I have. Then, when the recession started – my business was really hit hard with sales dropping by over 50%.  I dropped my expensive on-line advertising, stuck it out, and managed to stay in the black throughout the worst of everything. Now, in the last 3-4 months I have started to notice an increase in sales again.  I believe things are starting to turn around for me and hope to be back to my pre-recession levels soon.

How have you grown in the last year and what do you have on the horizon for 2010?

This year I really concentrated on online social networking. I continue to grow my newsletter, which is by far my best investment in getting repeat sales. I’ve also turned on some of the online advertising I had stopped. That is one of the best sources for getting new customers.

I also have reached a point where I am a respected professional jewelry designer. I have won a couple of jewelry design contests and been featured twice in a magazine. I’m respected locally and online for my commitment to creativity, helping others in their own business and providing unique, original products for my customers. I am also starting to get more requests for wholesale accounts.

For 2010, I will continue to focus on my cross stitch inventory which is the bread and butter of my business. I have drastically increased my online social networking via twitter, face book, blogging, online marketing groups such as Unique Women in Business, etc. I have seen benefits of this, but it is time consuming and I often wonder if my time could be better spent.

Outside of my online store I am working to increase my jewelry wholesale accounts, other sales venues and I continue to participate in events for women where I can sell my jewelry. My jewelry is extremely successful with in person sales and I am working very hard to transfer that success to internet sales. This has been one my major challenges and one of the things most frustrating to me – that I can’t reproduce my jewelry sales online to match the jewelry sales I obtain at shows.

Sounds like you have a lot in store for the next year. Lastly, why would you recommend 3dCart to a new ecommerce customer or someone looking to switch?

3dCart is very intuitive and full of features. It is also very reliable and when there is a rare problem it is usually addressed VERY quickly. With the introduction of 24/7 support and hopefully a new release with new features, that shows me that 3dCart is committed to staying around and constantly improving what they offer.

Carla, Thank you for taking the time to sit down with us. It’s my pleasure to award you with the 3dCart Excellence in Ecommerce award for April 2010.

Until May 3rd, our readers can use the code 3dcart at Cobwebcorner.com and save 10%!

YOGAaccessories.com finds their inner peace with 3dCart.

Scott Broder is no stranger to success. With a bevy of online companies under his belt, its no surprise that he turned YOGAaccessories.com into a powerhouse in the online wellness community. Let’s hear what Scott has to say about his experience with 3dCart:

“We have been using 3dCart now for over 18 months with great success, during a very rough economic environment. We migrated from another cart that was not stable enough to handle the high volume we process daily. The technical support is great, and the new extended hours help out a lot. The custom design services were able to migrate our old design so that our customers didn’t even know we had a new site. The 2 reasons we chose 3dCart were ease of use and features. Ease of use was key to us because the employees needed to get up and running quickly without training and with the high volume of transactions we see daily, the new system needed to be simple and quick to use. The features, especially in the promotions manager were key to driving new revenues. I would use them again, and we do!”

For the very best in Yoga accessories, clothes, and wholesale supplies, make sure to visit YOGAaccessories.com and tell them 3dCart sent ya!

Candy.com Finds Sweet Success With 3dCart

Candy.com is the brainchild of cousins Greg Balestrieri and Joe Melville, who represent the 3rd generation of success for the family owned and operated, Melville Candy Company. After witnessing the 400%  growth of Melville Candy’s online store, they realized they could take a bite out of the $30 billion dollar candy industry. “This is a new business with the same passion and some of the same family,” Balestrieri said.  “We’re going to revolutionize the candy industry by creating a fun and exciting candy community for children of all ages. The corner candy store is back!”

History

35 years ago, the Melville Candy Company began when Gary Melville began creating candy in his kitchen. Since then, it has been sold to vendors such as Crate & Barrel, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Bloomingdale’s, and has been featured in gift baskets distributed at the Tony Awards. Their barley lollipops range from sea creatures, zoo animals to custom created designs.
Candy.com has been on the virtual real estate selling block for awhile, having been bypassed by Hershey’s and other candy manufacturers. It wasn’t until 2009 that cousins Greg and Joe realized they could create the largest corner candy store in the world by harnessing the organic traffic that candy.com already received. The way they saw it, they could either spend millions on creating and marketing a brand name, or they could buy a name that is ingrained in the very fabric of our lives. They purchased Candy.com in June for $3 million dollars and it became the second largest domain transaction in 2009. One month later, Candy.com went online with the largest candy community to date.

CEO Greg Balestrieri says, “Candy.com is becoming the destination on the net for everything to do with candy. Our forums, blog and community are growing.”

Currently, they are offering over 6000 different products but this will change when they finish adding a 3rd distributor. The Candy.com Kraft Shop will bring in about 16,000 additional products, helping it to become the largest purveyor of candy and candy related products online serving local candy stores, retail customers, and wholesale clientele.

Spreading the Word

A domain like Candy.com is synonymous with an online candy store, but to really position themselves correctly, they have chosen an SEO firm, thinkbigsites.com, to cement their stake on Google. They are currently showing up organically on the second page, so they don’t have that far to go. Greg tells us that they get most of their traffic from adwords and shopping engines like Pricegrabber, shopzilla, bizrate, and shopping.com, “Email marketing is huge!” Greg says, “We use vertical response and whenever we send out a newsletter or promotion, we see our sales skyrocket.”

In the upcoming year, Candy.com will truly be one to watch. With over 20,000 products, a community, and one of the quirkiest blogs I’ve  ever read,  their quest at become the home of candy online, is off to a shining start.

Also, Greg was generous enough to provide a 10% discount to our readers. Just use code 3dcart when checking out and you can get some sweet savings to go along with your sweet treats.

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Fernando Lulli of RoyalYarns.com surprised our technical support team today with a Thanksgiving pizza party. Here you can see the brave souls that decided to come back for seconds…thirds.. and in one instance, fourths…

One of our most creative and interesting clients, baconsalt.com, has released 2 innovative and exciting new products.

Mmmvelopes

So, after thousands of years and kajillions of horrible tasting envelopes licked, we’re happy to report that J&D’s Bacon-Flavored Mmmvelopes™ are here to save the day. No longer will envelopes taste like the underside of your car. You can enjoy the taste of delicious bacon instead.

That’s right, bacon. It’s not real bacon, mind you, so you won’t have to start storing your envelopes in the refrigerator. But it really does taste like bacon. Which is what you really wanted in the first place, isn’t it? And it only took us 4,000 years to get there. Eat that, alien invaders.

[view product page]

We’re hoping that they start sending their correspondence to us in these delicious envelopes

The year is half over. For most of us, this is a time of vacations, summer cookouts, and beach weather.

For business owners, it’s a time of planning, preparing, and ramping up for the holiday shopping season. 3dCart is very proud of what its customer base has accomplished, and will achieve in the coming year and we’d like to put the focus on you.

Our marketing team is hard at work developing a nationwide ad campaign that will feature our clients. We’d like to hear from you. If you think you, or another client, is a success story that should be shared, then email us your story at success@3dcart.com

Whether your company is 1 person, or 100 people, we want to hear about your success story. We want to hear about all you’ve accomplished with our company.
We’re going to feature 5-8 companies, in a nationwide campaign that will get you considerable traffic and interest. So as you can see, this will really put you in the spotlight.

Onward and upward,
3dCart

Check out their selection at www.pritinyc.com