A Cloth Retail Business and Benefits of Ecommerce - Case Study Example

Case Study Analysis E-Kin a cloth retail business that started by the idea of Slim Pickens, Jennifer Valley and Ken E. Sellit after a little incident that took place at a local restaurant. Like every business, it started on a small scale. E-Kin used to make tee shirts at the basement of Slim’s house and soon they had mastered in Place University’s tee shirts. Like every small partnership, they promoted and sold their products themselves in order to pay up for their tuition fees. With the increase in sales their fame also grew which resulted in E-Kin to expand their production from just tee shirts in to various other types of clothing’s like caps, sweatshirts, school flags and many more. As the work load increased so E-Kin had to increase the number of people working in the firm. Maria Whinner was employed to handle the customer service and distribution of the products. With time the business took a turn up and grew making the company to hire a CIO in the form of Cam Crawford, a CFO in the form of Won Dour Trump and a Purchasing Director in the form of Eric Zachary. With the increase in sales of the business and expansion into new products E-Kin had to increase its reach. The expansion had to be from not only the people who could reach up to their retail outlets or call up on their number and order products but to people who lived miles away and even in other countries. As, the pressure from competing retail firms had started increasing, a step forward into the market had to be made in order to expand their firm and to attract and maintain new costumers to their products. With the advancement in technology and pressure from other competing firms, the only way possible for E-Kin to achieve this goal was to expand their business services into E-commerce. But before that they had to think up of the positive and negative aspects of doing so because they now are already a well reputed company who not only has to expand but also has to maintain its brand image. The suggestion by the Sales and Marketing Director of E-Kin that is Ken E. Sellit of taking the business into E-commerce has its own benefits and drawbacks. The potential benefits of using e-commerce to E-Kin can be that E-Kin can expand their potential buyers also known as their product market from their city to the national level and even to the international level with minimal amount of investment. With e-commerce E-Kin can easily approach more customers without having to open their outlets in new cities, and without employing new and more workers. E-commerce can also help E-Kin to digitalize their company’s information hence reducing the costs of the paper based information storage system. It is also a common perception that online presence enhances the brand image of a retailer. This is why many retailers are moving to the cyber sphere in order to grow their presence and to leverage information technology particularly e-commerce to earn profits. Hence, getting into e-commerce will help E-Kin to enhance its image in the clothing’s market. With the help of e-commerce, E-Kin will be able to break through the hindrance that is provided by the difference of time and distance. With the website available for 24 hours all throughout the seven days of the week, there will be no timing problems for the customers and they will be able to view various products according to their will at any time that they want to (Ecommerce Education, 2014). E-Kin after initiating e-commerce will be available at all time for the people from across the globe. Comparatively the costs of running e-commerce store is very low than running an original shop. The chance of E-Kin to reach out its products to new and even bigger markets can be great by only utilizing e-commerce. With the introduction of e-commerce, E-Kin can increase the variety of products that it provides. It can start producing pants, trousers, jackets, coats and many other clothing products. Once E-Kin starts its only website and takes up e-commerce the potential cost of every item that is sold will reduce and will result in the profits to increase (Sisson, 2014). We have up till yet discussed the advantages that E-Kin will face by introducing e-commerce in its company. But now we will discuss the disadvantages that E-Kin will face by introducing e-commerce in the company. The biggest concern of an e-commerce business is its security. Usually when businesses introduce themselves to the internet world they are comparatively more vulnerable to the attack of hackers as they barely have enough experience on the field. The issue arrives when customers share their debit and credit card information with the e-commerce websites. If E-Kin opens an e-commerce website and the credit card ids that are provided by the customers gets hacked then the reputation of the business can fall rapidly and the previous customers of the company might also refrain from buying them. Usually people care a lot about the reputation of the company they are buying products from and if E-Kin’s reputation drops then the sales will also drop (Triua, 2014). E-Kin will also need to maintain the website that is it will need to employ more workers who can keep a look on the website and keep hackers off from the website thus increasing the costs. Usually the concern of the people is that the products they see on the website are very different from the product that they receive at their homes. Maintaining the product quality throughout the process of shipping and arriving at the customer’s place will become a big problem for E-Kin (Triua, 2014). The security issue does not end on to credit and debit card ids but is an extensive issue that needs proper look over. The addresses, personal contact numbers and other personal information of people can also be misused if the website gets hacked resulting in such delicate information to be used for ill purposes by the hackers. Reputation is what matters a lot and nobody would like to deal with an ill reputed business and E-Kin has a good reputation which it needs to maintain in order for it to keep on making profits. Looking at all these aspects and the position at which E-Kin is, I will advice that E-Kin should not opt for e-commerce as it is not properly ready for such a big step. The fact that the people involved in E-Kin barely have ideas about information technology, opting such a method can be dangerous as the results might even do to the worst and it is a risk that E-Kin should not take. The thinking that Ken E. Sellit has is very advanced for E-Kin at this stage because E-Kin is just operating at this moment in one city. If it would already have been operating in more than one city then opting e-commerce would have been a superb idea as they would have more resources and ideas on how to run the website of the company. The popularity of E-Kin can get damaged if this threats that are stated get true. What E-Kin should try to do is approach other neighboring cities and make the people over there like and accept their products. Once they have achieved this goal and their brand has got a proper and strong brand image and name then they can carry on with such ideas. References Ecommerceeducation.com,. (2014). Benefits of Ecommerce | Advantages Of Ecommerce | Online Business | Ebusiness Benefits. Retrieved 24 December 2014, from http://www.ecommerceeducation.com/benefits-of-ecommerce.asp Sisson, N. (2013). Advantages of e-commerce for business. Lime Canvas. Retrieved 24 December 2014, from http://www.limecanvas.com/advantages-of-e-commerce-for-business/ Triua.com,. (2014). 5 Advantages and Disadvantages of E-Commerce | Personal Finance and Business Advisor. Retrieved 24 December 2014, from http://www.triua.com/100/5-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-e-commerce.html Read More