BulbAmericaLighting up online sales

Company Overview

“We never imagined that our catalog of products would be shown on Sears, Newegg and Rakuten.com Shopping. Now, we get orders from all these marketplaces on a daily basis. When we started this business, we had only four lightbulbs. We now have over 50,000 lightbulbs.” said Corey Frons, CEO, BulbAmerica

With over 50,000 unique lightbulbs and over 250,000 customers, BulbAmerica has become one of the largest online sources for lightbulbs and fixtures in the US. Having direct partnerships with Philips, Sylvania, Osram, GE, Ushio, Satco, Sunlite and many others has helped BulbAmerica offer unparalleled lightbulb pricing along with top-notch customer service. Since BulbAmerica started selling online in 2003, the company has been committed to providing honest and helpful customer service, with six lighting specialists on staff. As of 2015, BulbAmerica has made the prestigous Inc. 500 list three years in a row and continues to experience solid growth.

The Situation

The company only sold on a limited number of marketplaces and wanted to diversify, but to do so they needed to attract more visitors to its website. However, the company didn’t have a reliable solution to grow its online visibility.

When CEO Corey Frons joined BulbAmerica, the company was selling on a limited number of marketplaces. He wanted the company to develop a multichannel strategy to expand beyond Amazon and eBay. Frons knew that BulbAmerica needed to use a solution provider to efficiently launch on these marketplaces.

“I knew there were many other marketplaces that could drive more sales for us, but launching on those channels wasn’t easy. You can’t just snap your fingers and make all your products available — you need a partner. For us, that partner was ChannelAdvisor,” said Frons.

The Solution

BulbAmerica turned to ChannelAdvisor Marketplaces to expand beyond Amazon and eBay and grow its online presence. The company sent its product feed to the ChannelAdvisor platform and was able to launch on three additional marketplaces: Newegg, Rakuten.com Shopping and Sears.

“We never imagined that our catalog of products would be shown on Sears, Newegg and Rakuten.com Shopping. Now, we get orders from all these marketplaces on a daily basis,” said Frons.

BulbAmerica decided to use ChannelAdvisor Digital Marketing to enhance its online advertising strategy and capture more consumers during their online shopping journeys. BulbAmerica used ChannelAdvisor’s Flex Feed technology to automate the process of configuring campaigns across digital marketing channels.

“If we were trying to do all the digital marketing that we’re doing today without ChannelAdvisor, it would entail having two or three people doing data entry. They would be massaging data for each channel. With ChannelAdvisor, we do it once and our products are broadcast to all our digital marketing channels,” said Frons.

The Results

After implementing ChannelAdvisor as an all-in-one solution for marketplaces and digital marketing, Bulb America streamlined its marketplaces business, grew its product quantity to over 50,000 lightbulbs.

“When we started this business, we had only four lightbulbs. That was it. We now have over 50,000 lightbulbs — any type of bulb you can think of, we have it. Without ChannelAdvisor, we’d be locked into administration instead of stepping back and focusing on the business,” said Frons.