Houser Shoes

Traditional Regional Retailer selling across the U.S. via B2C eCommerce

Solution     B2B eCommerce, Marketplace Integration
Platform    Magento 2

Overview

Customers are the most important people in any business – That’s the philosophy Gary Houser, President and Founder of Houser Shoes, has taken to heart since opening his first store in Gastonia, NC in 1976. This approach has netted great success as Houser Shoes has expanded to include another brand, GB Shoe Warehouse; a chain of retail stores throughout the Southeast; and an established, comprehensive omni-channel on-line presence.

To create an online experience to match their in store experience, Houser Shoes focused on designing an eCommerce website where customer service is always friendly and friction free. However, reaching their goal of a destination where pleasurable shopping transactions take place has been no small feat.

To expand their customer’s experience, Houser Shoes also required the capability to offer more brands through drop shippers so that more styles and size options would be available in their online product catalog. In addition, Houser Shoes required to extend their brand to marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay.

Solution

Since 2014, Kadro Solutions provides Magento eCommerce development and support services to Houser Shoes.

Initially, with their Magento Enterprise site operating on Magento 1.12, Houser Shoes found itself in need of a partner to bring their customer service vision to life. Struggling to find the right service provider to call “home,” House Shoes engaged Kadro to stabilize on-going site issues and to improve its website experience. Kadro provided the following:

 

  • Stabilized site issues and provided a comprehensive roadmap for site enhancements
  • Implemented OneStepCheckOut for a more seamless checkout experience
  • Migrated the site to a responsive design and implementation
  • Improved site speed & performance
  • Improved site security
  • Created custom gift card and rewards points capabilities
  • Provided US-based Magento Enterprise support
  • 60% increase for mobile in new users and transactions from previous year
  • 57% more revenue from mobile phone transactions

We needed a partner to step up to the daily eCommerce challenges we face and provide us the support and experience required to reach our vision. Kadro’s team has been a true asset to our online business with Magento Enterprise and has responded to deliver for our plans around site performance, mobility and strategic eCommerce planning.

Gary Houser

President & Founder, Houser Shoes Inc.

Kadro continued to provide significant enhancements to the Houser Shoes’ Magento 1 site including the following:

  • EDI data integrations with multiple shoe brand vendors that provide drop shipping fullfillment – this enabled Houser Shoes to greatly expand the number of brands, styles, and size options in their on-line product catalog
  • Enhancements to Houser Shoes’ in-store order fulfillment and inventory assignment process.
  • New business and financial reporting capabilities with additional Magento and JD Edwards on IBM AS/400 data integration to improve order and inventory management.
  • Onboarding the Houser Shoes product catalog on Amazon and eBay with an integration with Solid Commerce.

In 2020, Kadro deployed a new www.housershoes.com site on Magento Commerce 2.3. In addition to the site replatforming to Magento Commerce 2, the goal of the project included achiving business functional partity so that all existing business processes and workflows would be maintained. In addition, Houser Shoes’ marketing performed a rebranding of the company’s online brand which required a website redesign. The Magento 2 project achieved the following:

  • Full data migration for products, orders, and customer accounts from Magento 1 to Magento 2.
  • Website redesign and migration/setup of all site content in Magento Commerce’s PageBuilder CMS.
  • Migration of all EDI data integrations with multiple shoe vendors, including the addition of new vendors.
  • Replacement of prior shipping and fulfillment solution to use ShipStation, with customizations required for Houser Shoes’ custom in-store fulfillment and product inventory assignment processes and workflows.
  • Migration of marketplace integrations.
  • Migration of all custom back-office integration with JD Edwards ERP on IBM AS/400 including all data feeds for inventory, price, product onboarding, promotions, order management, fulfillment, and end of day business data reporting.

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