Small businesses cash in on Cyber Monday trend
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — West Michigan small businesses are working to cash in on Cyber Monday. While they lack the staff and resources of the big stores, they are finding new ways to meet their customers’ needs.
Stores in downtown Grand Rapids are working to build their online presence. The Grand Rapids Vault of Midnight location says having rare or limited-quantity items helps them reach customers.
“We ship all the way around the world,” manager Cody Clair said. “It’s huge especially in today’s online shopping market where you can order almost anything directly to your door. There’s quite a few massive online conglomerates, so small local businesses we’ve been trying to do a little bit to put ourselves in that market and trying to do what we can to compete.”
Order fulfillment is done on a smaller scale where employees remove items from the shelves and package them for shipment.
“I’ve personally packaged a small card game that I shipped over to Thailand that was about twice the cost for the game for the shipping. But they couldn’t find it anywhere in their country so they were able to find it online via our website,” Clair said.
Growing its online presence has been a focus for the Old World Olive Company who is also trying to reach those customers with special deals, according to owner Shasta Fase.
“This time of year is really the one time that we do discounts or bundle deals where you buy something you get something free,” Fase told News 8. “We find that a lot of people like that bundle option because it might be something that they could give to someone else and that takes care of their gift list, so we find this time of year of course is the busiest.”
Fase says growing the website and adding new features is one way they can meet their customers’ needs.
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“We have kind of expanded our Cyber Monday to allow people to order online and pick it up in one of our stores,” Fase said.
Even without the big warehouse, the store’s quality and customer service is how they try to set themselves apart.
“We can’t compete with someone, you know, a company that large, but we try to offer things that would be an incentive to our customers. We have got quite a loyal following,” Fase said.
Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. is offering a technical assistance grant that can help businesses with expanding or creating an e-commerce presence online.
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