Case Study

After serving golfers worldwide for over 40 years, who would Austad's Golf select to help them launch and operate a state-of-the-art ecommerce website? Here's the story behind their success.

Austad's has been helping golfers enjoy their game more since 1963. Austad's President, Dave Austad, says that his father started the company with a simple belief, "Bend over backwards to take care of the customer and they will be your friend for life."

As this core principle was followed, in their catalog sales and through 10 retail stores based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, millions of golfers experienced great service and the word spread.

In late 2001 Austad's Golf decided to get serious about selling online. They astutely recognized that the Internet was going to introduce a market channel that would allow them to leverage their rich experience in both catalog and retail stores. They also realized that, although they had a lot of retail knowledge, Internet sales would introduce some unique challenges. They started their search for a provider who had both the technology and expertise that would position them for success in this new venture.

They defined their requirements and started researching e-commerce solution providers. Their criteria list included:

• Able to handle their existing large database of customers
• Rich merchandising features to stand out in competitive golf industry
• Scalable to handle their anticipated growth
• Integration with their point-of-sale system Retail Pro

Through their Retail Pro reseller, they discovered that UniteU is the largest and most successful ecommerce provider offering proven integration with Retail Pro.

Since going live on the UniteU on demand ecommerce solution, including Retail Pro integration, in 2002 they have experienced impressive growth. Austads now encourages their customers to "click, call or drive". Multi-channel retailing is paying off for Austad's and industry reports reflect this trend. Forrester Research recently found that customers who shop three different ways -- in stores, on Web sites and with catalogs -- spend about four times more than customers who shop only through one of those channels. Similarly, customers who shop two different ways spend two to three times more than the single-channel consumer. Now that's a success story!