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May 2007

Owner Shirley Tan made Americanbridal.com a successful online-only business. Now she's expanding her audience, selling the merchandise that she warehouses to different types of customers through different online stores.

Shirley Tan of AmericanBridal.com left her brick-and-mortar store in 2004. She now has 20 employees, who process about 150 orders a day—almost a 300% increase in the last year alone. And she recently purchased space in a San Francisco warehouse.

She's starting to leverage that warehouse space by selling her products to different audiences through different online stores.

Narrowing inventory widens revenue
Tan started out with a gift store in the San Francisco Gift Center. "I thought we were in the gift business," said Tan, "but I started noticing that the people coming in were would-be brides. I realized we were in the wedding business."

Tan limited her inventory to wedding-related accessories, and the shop took off. "Just like a restaurant has a signature dish, you need to have something that you are well-known for, your unfair advantage," said Tan. American Bridal's niche is personalization, because everyone wants their wedding to be unlike anyone else's. Tan invested in machinery for engraving and embroidery, and her staff makes handmade jewelry to match customers' color schemes.

Although her business was successful, the hours and stress of the retail business were getting old for Tan. "I just didn't have a life," she said.

Specializing in online sales
When she switched to an online-only business in 2004, Tan reduced her staff from 15 to four, and cut her inventory 30 percent. "We took out the things that you had to see in person," Tan explained. "Sometimes intricacy or detail can be hard to see online, and scented candles or body lotion can be hard to imagine."

Tan chose the Yahoo! platform for its ease of use. "I made myself learn it," she said. "It wasn't too hard." Although she now has technical help, she often adds products or makes other changes to the site herself. "I want to be able to do the easy stuff," she said, adding that that's one of the reasons she uses Yahoo! Merchant Solutions.

She also realized that her customers had to be able to find her online. Initially, "we weren't showing up in search results." Tan spent time studying which terms customer actually type in when they're searching for products like the ones she offers, and she rewrote the product descriptions on her site. She advertised in bridal magazines, advertised with search engines, and even added a third-party program that sorts the items on her site, moving them up in her search results according to how popular they are. She also looked at usability for the site, making sure that information was placed where customers expected to find it so the site was easy to use.

Leveraging warehouse space with multiple stores
As her online sales skyrocketed, Tan hired more staff and increased her warehouse space, recently acquiring a 10,000-square-foot space in San Francisco. Then she realized she could leverage that space by selling the merchandise she warehouses to different audiences through different online stores.

Owner Shirley Tan in the American Bridal warehouse

Visitors to Americanbridal.com are about 80% female, but Tan knew that grooms traditionally buy gifts for their groomsmen and brides, as well as some other wedding accessories. She started groomsmengifts.com to serve that market.

That site is structured a little differently than Americanbridal.com. "The ladies want to look at everything; the men don't," explained Tan. "We notice that we have a lot of second-day-air orders from men, and it's great that we can offer that service for them," Tan said, noting that Yahoo! Merchant Solutions makes it easy to offer special shipping options.

Tan also launched mybridesmaids.com and has plans for several more stores, all offering selections of merchandise from her existing collection, but built differently to appeal to different types of customers.

Planning for success
The collection of products on each site is tightly edited. "We're very picky about what we add on," said Tan. "It's just one more distraction to your user if it's not useful to them." She tries to select items that can serve more than one purpose.

And Tan advises merchants to think carefully about more than just inventory. She has a shelf of books on business trends in her office, and says you must have a business plan to be successful. "Everything has to have a system," she stated. "We're fine-tuning our system so it's a dynamic process that can run itself."