At this year’s January ANME Show in Burbank, Calif., CalExotics and its sister brand JOPEN had more than new products to showcase — the companies also revealed a new joint website that’s designed to serve as a one-stop shop to serve distributors and resellers.
The new website offers access to a variety of the companies’ marketing material, including detailed product information, videos, high-res images, enhanced product descriptions and more. The new CalExotics.com is also full of rich content, including product reviews and a question-and-answer section for each product.
This will help us maximize our efforts and enable better monitoring and reporting. -Susan Colvin, CalExotics
As retailers have begun to familiarize themselves with the site’s upgraded features and new technology, CalExotics is reporting a successful launch and a positive response from retailers. In this exclusive Q&A with Susan Colvin, CalExotics’ founder and CEO, she details the website’s upgrades and how they are helping retailers.
XBIZ: What are some of the website’s new features?
Susan Colvin: One main feature of the new website is based on segmentation. With thousands of products our target market varies tremendously and in order to better segment our target audiences we’ve broken down the website into three brands: CalExotics, CalExotics Etc., and JOPEN. CalExotics is our flagship brand with a focus on passion and romance. Within the CalExotics brand, popular products like the Butterfly Kiss and Jack Rabbit can be found. CalExotics Etc. was created with the adventure-seeker in mind. This brand includes adventurous collections like Scandal and Love Rider. JOPEN is for luxury shoppers looking to take care of themselves. Top JOPEN collections include Callie, a favorite of Cosmopolitan magazine, and Opal, the world’s only rechargeable glass pleasure products. This segmentation allows us to better target the consumer and to drive traffic to the most desirable products based on their needs.
Another feature of the new site is its security. Before a user can access sensitive information, they must log in. This allows us to control who receives access to confidential and proprietary information, including product information, pricing and imagery. This is helping with our ongoing fight against counterfeit goods.
The site also allows customers to place orders for CalExotics and JOPEN in one location. We are sister companies, but many of our resources cross over. It was only natural to offer a single ordering system. This allows us to be even more efficient.
XBIZ: How will retailers benefit from the new site?
Colvin: For retailers, we’ve ensured the new CalExotics.com is the ultimate reseller’s resource. It acts as a centralized location for the company’s collateral and assets, plus it is easy to navigate and place orders. When logged in, industry professionals can access detailed product information, catalogs, brochures, images, videos and more.
The site is also the main portal for the company’s online educational center, the CalExotics Institute. The CalExotics Institute is an online educational resource for industry professionals aimed at aiding in the selling experience, specifically at the retail level. It provides courses on general sales training, for both CalExotics and JOPEN products, along with product-specific resources and sexual health and wellness content.
XBIZ: What inspired the website’s update?
Colvin: A website overhaul has been on our “to-do” list for some time. Technology has changed dramatically over the past seven years, and we needed a site that can keep up. We also wanted a centralized hub for all of our information. With our old website,we had multiple sites handling a variety of tasks. We had one site for sexual health and wellness content, one for warranty information, one for our sister company JOPEN, and a variety of others. With the new site, we can aggregate all of our content into one centralized location. This is extremely helpful when it comes to marketing. All of our online marketing efforts can now be focused on driving traffic to one place. This will help us maximize our efforts and enable better monitoring and reporting.
XBIZ: Have retailers already begun using the site? What has the feedback been like?
Colvin: Our customers are having great success with our new website. They find it easy to navigate and the ordering process to be efficient. These were two areas we made sure to focus on, so we are happy to hear the positive feedback.
Retailers are also reporting great success. They love the ability to access all of our resources in real time. Plus, the new site gives retailers the ability to manage the information that goes into our store locator feature. Retailers can now change location information, even down to their hours of operation. This has been extremely helpful, and retailers are seeing increased foot traffic thanks to our new system.
XBIZ: How easy to use is the new site?
Colvin: The new website was built using the latest e-commerce platform. This means the site is run using the most up-to-date technology, allowing for more advanced capabilities and more efficient processing. It is also 100 percent mobile-friendly. The user interface is optimized for mobile and tablet view. Each section changes based on the device and can provide all the same access as the standard desktop viewing.
