Beer lovers will drink this up! Did you know that not only can you drink your favorite
brand of beer or liquor, but you can WEAR it too?
Co-founders and brothers, Kevin and Jeff Eichelberger own BeerTees.com, an online
retailer of licensed beer and liquor apparel. The business was created after Kevin,
who worked days as a web developer and moonlighted as a bartender, was looking for
some t-shirts and polos to wear while bartending, but found very little online.
So the two decided to start a business providing consumers one place to find products
from their favorite beer, liquor and malt liquor brands.
BeerTees.com features over 50 different brands spanning a variety of different apparel
products for both men and women, including t-shirts, hats, sandals, boxer shorts,
pajama pants, and more. “We have a commitment to getting the customers their orders
as quickly as possible,” says Kevin. The site uses a $5 flat rate shipping cost,
and most orders ship same or next day by Priority Shipping.
Since BeerTees.com started from scratch as an online company, all of its business
processes and software became established as it progressed. What started off as
inventorying products in a spare bedroom of an apartment is now a full-fledged warehouse
space, with plans for moving into a larger warehouse in early 2008.
Initially, Kevin used his web development expertise to custom build his own e-commerce
platform. “But with growth,” says Kevin, “it quickly became evident that this solution
wouldn’t scale to meet our needs.” So the pair went through an extensive process
to find a new shopping cart solution. “We first narrowed down the platform we wanted
it built on. Then we scoured the net for reviews and set up demo stores (where available).”
Kevin and Jeff also read through material on the vendors’ websites and monitored
the forums of the vendors to gauge the experiences of others.
They realized that no one solution was going to solve every problem. “Instead of
being limited by the software, we preferred to be able to extend the product with
custom development. Many solutions did not offer this,” says Kevin. “On top of our
other requirements, BV was best.”
“In other software, some were halfway there, but BV has full support for CSS designs.”
Those other requirements were CSS supported design, one-page checkout and custom
defined URLs. 85% of BeerTees.com sales come from natural search, making SEO capabilities
an important concern. Kevin says, “In other software, some were halfway there, but
BV has full support for CSS designs. Most (other software programs) have URL rewriting,
but the ability to define your own URL is much better than having the software create
it automatically for you.”
"Most (other software programs) have URL rewriting, but the ability to define
your own URL is much better than having the software create it automatically for
you."
Kevin says, “For us, success meant being successful and competitive in our industry,
providing beer and liquor fans some great products, and having some fun doing so.
This is a fun business and we wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't.”