Rebranding my e-commerce site for resellers of my product?

multiple storefronts

[ManagerMatt]

Hello,

I own a manufacturing company that runs through our E-commerce website. I create custom items that have several customizable options. I sell directly through my site but also have partnerships with over 1000 different retail stores in the US.

The way things work currently, a customer will go to the retail store and place an order for the custom product I produce, the store employee will take the order and then transmit the order to me via our website.

I want to find out how I could "rebrand" my existing order entry e-commerce site to be customized for each of my retail resellers.

The closest comparison would be an auto manufacturer. Each dealership sells a car that can be customized to meet the specific needs of the customer, but the dealership doesn't actually make the car they send the order to the manufacturing plant. Each local dealership has the ability to customize a vehicle on their website (but not place the order).

Is there a way to integrate my ordering process into everyone of my retailer's websites easily?

any ideas/help is appreciated!

thanks,

Matthew

[lorax]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

I can think of a couple ways to achieve this.

Give them an HTML page with an iFrame that displays your eCommerce front end. This would live on their website. The wrapper around the iFrame could be branded to look like their website but it's actually your storefront.

Give them each a unique URL to tie into their navigation. When their customer clicks on the that nav item, they are taken to your eCommerce store. You can use a script to read the URL and then deliver a custom style sheet and/or template to make the store front look like the retailer's website. When the order is completed, send the buyer back to the retailers's website.

[digitalv]

I'm not sure why you would want to do this, are all of your retailers private label and putting their own name on the product? If not, then you don't have to customize the checkout experience for their customer. You don't need to hide your name from the customer.

A better strategy is to keep your code centralized and just automatically give credit to a retailer for all orders within their region. This is how Miche bags does it... they're in hundreds of stores and have independent reps. When a customer orders online, based on their zip code a retailer or rep gets credit automatically based on location.

Retailers and reps prefer it, because they don't have to do ANYTHING on their end - they just either plug in the info themselves or tell the customer to go home and do it, and they still get credit for the sale. No worrying about special URLS, affiliate/referral codes, etc. Plus they like the fact that they may ultimately get "free" credit for a sale they had nothing to do with. It benefits you because you control the brand and no one else is out there with web pages containing matching descriptions that reduce the value of your own original page.

[ManagerMatt]

Lorax and DigitalV -

Thank you for responding to my post! Your feedback is very valuable.

In direct response to DigitalV - I have several retailers that have shops in the same shopping complex so we need a more sophisticated way of tracking sales to ensure that the correct reseller gets the commission. Also, our product is sold through our own commerce site, and I've had some concerns expressed from our resellers that if their customer purchases a product from us (via our reseller) the customer may repurchase directly from us next time (even though their is no benefit for a customer to do that) and will miss out on the commission for those future sales.

Ultimately I do agree that the problems of customizing our checkout to meet the needs of all 5000+ of our nationwide resellers is too complicated. Is there any way to ensure we can always associate a customer with a reseller?

The main part need for our resellers/my company is the ability to:

1) Have the customer order from home (not have to come into a store).
2) Proof the order (we offer custom printing services)with the customer through an user interface that allows the customer to customize the order to meet their specific needs - the UI creates a proof once the order is added to the cart.
3) Have the order shipped to the resellers store and then charge the shipping costs to the reseller (they want to have the customer come into the store to sell more goods to the customer)/ or have the shipping be paid by the customer and ship the order to the customers desired address.


Once again, your feedback is very appreciated.