PoolRafts Case Study

“We needed a redesign so that our business could run efficiently. We knew we had to redesign our back end operations in order to grow in the years ahead. We needed to merge our shopping cart system, our data base and our UPS shipping software. Solid Cactus moved us from our old platform to the Yahoo! platform and then blended everything together. PoolRafts.com needed to build a solid platform for our future growth, and Solid Cactus gave us that platform.”
—Terry Black, PoolRafts.com

PoolRafts.com is just what they sound like, an online company specializing in pool toys-lots of pool toys! 800 products and growing including air mats, pool toys, pool floats, wave surfers, even snow tubes. The products are for kids of all ages, including adults and the elderly. The company has 3 employees in 3,000 very packed square feet. The company first came online in 1999, but by 2004 owner Terry Black knew he was ready to invest in the future. He surfed the web and noted qualities he liked on other e-commerce sites. More and more the answer was the same and Terry made his decision. Solid Cactus did the PoolRafts.com redesign in early 2005 and business took off. “All of our growth has been in the last year and a half,” says Terry. “It’s not a coincidence. It’s Solid Cactus.”

On the front end Solid Cactus moved Poolrafts.com to the Yahoo! platform. “The graphics are better and it’s easier for customers to view the pages,” says Terry. They added Page View for increased fine tuning and to help focus customer interest. He also found the Search Engine Optimization to work better with the Solid Cactus use of the Yahoo! platform. “They maxed me out with Keywords and Meta-Tags. I got responses I wasn’t getting on the old format.”

For Terry, the big changes came on the back end with the addition of Cactus Complete Commerce. “It’s given us the ability to merge orders into a tracking system into the UPS shipping software.

It was horribly inefficient.” Terry can monitor real-time feedback about orders, inventory, shipping status and print shipping labels automatically.

A trip to Solid Cactus changed everything. Terry visited Solid Cactus’ sister company TheFerretStore.com, an e-commerce pioneer which was online back when Amazon just meant river. Before Solid Cactus recommends it, TheFerretStore.com makes sure it works. “We learned from TheFerretStore.com how to set up a warehouse,” says Terry. “With Cactus Complete Commerce you can load the pick locations on the pick list in the right order for each row. The pickers can work much faster and more accurately. They taught us to use the internet to make our company run more efficiently.”

2005 was a record year, 2006 is ahead of record pace, and sales are 37% ahead of last year. Order size has grown 27% since the Solid Cactus redesign, and Terry says that the ability of Cactus Complete Commerce to provide real-time data about the status of sales orders, and the automatic email follow-ups have made re-orders easier for customers. “The money we spent was worth it,” says Terry. “The investment paid for itself in a couple of months tops.”

Terry Black is looking for a larger warehouse; PoolRafts.com is a Solid Cactus success story. Terry liked the Solid Cactus team approach to e-commerce. “They have Cactus Complete Commerce teams, design teams, and every person is a specialist. They know their stuff. These guys are experts at e-commerce; experts with years of online business experience. Even their newsletter is filled with good ideas. When you’re ready to get serious about ecommerce, that’s when you come to Solid Cactus.”