Trust is a valuable commodity for all retailers, building and maintaining that trust can take a long time and lots of money. Many new start up e-Store’s simply don’t have the resources to invest in wholesale marketing and brand development. Bill Alden is taking a different approach to building trust with his customers, its simple but will it be effective?
Bill Alden’s Factory Outlet e-Store was launched in November 2004 and is based in Northern England. Like many other start-ups Alden-e-store.com has limited financial resources for marketing. However Bill Alden has identified that for virtually every transaction completed the buyer is unlikely to see what the seller looks like. Bill Alden reckons that putting a face to a name is an essential factor in the Customer/Supplier relationship.
“ I’ve been thinking for along time about how I can make my business accessible to my customers. Not only from a retail point of view but also from building trust with my customers. In addition to providing a safe and secure environment to sell our Health Products I felt that I needed to let my customers see who they are doing business with. I’ve always felt that this is important. Although its just a static image purchasing Health Products through my store on-line does have the distinct advantage over other websites and telesales in that you can see what I look like. Whether this will attract customers or drive them away only time will tell!” say’s Bill Alden, Managing Director of Alden-e-store.com.
It would seem that in the face of increasing marketing costs and lower amounts of start-up capital. That many on-line companies are having to think up novel and effective means of building relationships with their customers. Placing the Managing Directors’s Photograph on the website could be a double edged sword though, it may help build trust between customer and supplier but your Managing Director could become a Cyber Celebrity or not as in Bill’s case.
To browse Bill Aden’s Factory Outlet e-Store go to http://www.alden-e-store.com