An interview with Red Oxx Manufacturing

The website started out as the "silent salesman" for the little store in Billings, Montana -- chipping in a web order every couple days. Now five years later it leads sales growth across all channels. Ingredients include great products, shrewd brand-building and technology choices, timely PR, and a lot of hustle from a former Marine and Navy rigger.

Co-owner Jim Markel discovered E-business Coach in 2001, just after launching an e-commerce site built by his ad agency. After a couple years passed to recoup the investment, Red Oxx migrated e-commerce operations to E-business Coach's Total Blue System in 2003. Complimentary services from E-business Coach included an email marketing program, content development, SEO, and, well, e-business coaching. Experiencing triple digit annual sales growth in its web channel, by 2006 Red Oxx thirsted for a big shot of efficiency in order processing. In time for Christmas, Red Oxx integrated its Microsoft Retail Management System (inventory, shipping, point of sale, etc.) with its e-commerce website.

Jim talks with E-business Coach's Patrick Pitman:

E-business Coach Question: You've referred us many times over the years. What's one reason you keep doing this?

Red Oxx Answer: "I think you guys know your job better than anybody else. I have confidence in you."

Question: What's one thing you're relying on E-business Coach to do for you now, as a billable service, that you can imagine doing yourself in the future as your web team grows?

Answer: "Taking on more initiative for email marketing. You create and send our eBulletin today. Another area is content development. You've helped us create stories on our site that shares the excitement and pride people have in their bags. Man, you're the king of content, so I don't know if we want to replace you for that. What's cool is it's not just been about doing it for SEO reasons. [The content] has encouraged our brand's story -- why buy from Red Oxx."

Question: We describe Total Blue System as a continuously updated software product, and by implication, your website is continuously updated because of it. What's one example of such an update that mattered to redoxx.com?

Answer: "How you've dialed in the browsing of products has been important. The page templates keep getting better -- for search results and category pages. I've adopted your sortable page templates whole-heartedly."

Question: What did the integration with your order fulfillment system, Microsoft Retail Management System (RMS) mean for your day-to-day operation?

Answer:"Cyber Monday, as they call it, was crushing us before the integration. You've helped us take our online order processing from what might have dragged on until the afternoon -- now we're done in about 8 minutes. It's huge."

Question: Your growth is phenomenal. Can you describe a scenario in the next 3 years when you might outgrow what E-business Coach could offer you?

Answer: "We're growing, yes. But we're doing everything we can to look internal at our business as we grow, to make it stronger, to handle the growth. And I think you're doing the same with E-business Coach. We've been growing together.

"For where we're at right now, and where we're going, I'm nowhere near your biggest client, especially in sales on-line. Red Oxx has a lot of upward mobility within your product [Total Blue System] that we've yet to take advantage of. So no, I don't see a scenario where we outgrow E-business Coach."

Call us at 1-877-816-8161 or submit a question

Ask us a Question

What question might you want answered by E-business Coach? By our client? Ask it now and get one step closer to the kind of sales growth experienced by our clients.