TMCnet News

Blueport Commerce Caps Record Year With 70% Jump in Holiday Season Online Furniture Sales
[January 14, 2015]

Blueport Commerce Caps Record Year With 70% Jump in Holiday Season Online Furniture Sales


Blueport Commerce, the omnichannel solution for the $78 billion furniture industry, today announced record growth in 2014 including:

  • 66% Year-over-year revenue increases
  • Doubling the size of its live client base, which now represents $6.3 billion in total annual furniture sales
  • Helping furniture retailers on the Blueport platform drive unprecedented success during the holiday season, outperforming the industry by over 300%
  • Having signed long-term agreements with several of the largest North American furniture retailers - now including three of the top five conventional US furniture retailers and top players in Canada
  • Strengthening its senior management team with the addition of Sears' Randy Goldstein as Executive Vice President of E-commerce, Staples' (News - Alert) Kyle Marchesseault as Director of Marketing and building its employee base by 33%

In addition, Blueport today announced that Canadian retailer The Brick has successfully moved its e-commerce operations to the new Blueport SaaS (News - Alert) platform. Canada's largest retailer of home furnishings, mattresses, appliances and consumer electronics with 220 brick-and-mortar stores, The Brick represents Blueport's largest deployment to date.

"2014 was the year that furniture retailers broke through online. And Blueport solidified our leadership position as the enterprise partner of choice for North America's largest furniture retailers, expanding significantly into Canada with The Brick launch," said Carl Prindle, President and Chief Executive Officer of Blueport Commerce. "Retailers on the Blueport platform generated tremendous growth via our platform, with average year-over-year online sales increases of 70% on Cyber Monday with an average order size approaching $800, and their top-selling onine item being sectional sofas. The furniture and home furnishings sector was a top performing online sales category during the holiday season and our client base enjoyed a significant jump in online sales of real furniture."



The Brick's new e-commerce site marks the debut of Blueport's fully-responsive e-commerce platform, providing an optimal viewing and user experience across multiple devices including desktops, tablets and smartphones. The new platform will allow The Brick to seamlessly engage customers online and offline coast-to-coast across Canada.

"On-boarding The Brick-a major retailer with an established and successful track record in e-commerce-is a significant client win for us, and as our largest implementation to date, represents an important milestone for Blueport," said Prindle. "We are excited to kick-off 2015 by continuing the great momentum we built in 2014. We closed out 2014 having more than doubled the size of our live client base. We're relentlessly focused on improving our technology and helping our clients drive results. As we do, the sky's the limit for our clients and our company in this massive, underpenetrated online category."


New Platform Features Significant Enhancements

The newest iteration of the Blueport platform features significant enhancements long missing in the furniture category and which are critical components to helping traditional retailers drive omnichannel marketing and sales. New features such as: advanced segmentation tools that transform retailers' sites for different types of shoppers; dynamic product detail pages that easily customize to any retailers' presentation preferences; product configuration, which allows customers to view products in different sizes and colors; predictive search; customizable category landing pages; and personalized, search-driven merchandising are designed to both enable online sales and drastically improve in-store conversion.

"Consumers shopping for furniture don't think in terms of channels. These new features put the right local style, pricing, inventory and promotion information in front of a shopper at the right time - no matter where the customer is. We believe the furniture industry should be best-in-class at personalized, omnichannel retailing, and we have worked closely with our retail clients and their customers to offer this richer, digital-enabled furniture shopping experience," said Blueport's Chief Product Officer Andy Wolf.

"The Brick is focused on Saving You More, and we believe our online shoppers will save both money and time while finding the perfect items for their homes on our new website powered by Blueport," said Jim Caldwell, President of The Brick. "Blueport's expertise in online retail commerce of furniture, mattresses, appliances and electronics makes Blueport the ideal technology and strategic partner. We're thrilled to be working with such a professional, forward-thinking company."

About Blueport Commerce

Blueport Commerce helps leading furniture retailers capture their online opportunity. We marry retailers' brick-and-mortar infrastructure and expertise with our decade of online furniture experience, innovative technology and unique marketing and sales solutions to create modern, efficient and easy shopping experiences. $6.3 billion in retailers choose Blueport. For some retailers, Blueport's SaaS e-commerce platform powers their branded omnichannel websites, driving sales online and in their stores. For other retailers, we drive online sales through Furniture.com, our e-commerce marketplace. For many retailers, we do both. Our technology is transforming furniture retail, for the 4% of sofas that sell online and the 96% that don't. Learn more at www.blueport.com.


[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]