PinMartAutomating its Marketplace Business

Company Overview

The origins of PinMart began back in 1964, in Chicago, Illinois. Approximately 30 years later, the company’s products had grown to include promotional products, awards & recognition items and stock and custom lapel pins to both end users and other promotional product distributors. In 2000, the company divided its sales into two distinct groups: products available exclusively through resellers, and lapel pins and related items sold solely to end users via a new company, PinMart, Inc.

The Situation

• Took its business online
• Experienced the challenges of sending product data feeds to multiple channels

PinMart has been a retailer of promotional products for over 25 years and sells millions of pins annually. When the age of e-commerce came into full swing, PinMart started to take its traditional business online.

“When the internet age came around, we realized it could be a way to reach a bigger audience. Of course, we had no clue how fast e-commerce would grow,” said Mike Dominelli, PinMart president.

To jumpstart its online business, PinMart started selling on various marketplaces including Amazon and eBay. The company quickly realized the amount of time and labor it takes to upload its product feed across multiple online channels.

“I was having a conversation with my wife over dinner and was telling her how I wished there was a company that could take your product data, put it into one system and send it across all these marketplaces. I thought it would be so convenient instead of having to do it all yourself through all these cumbersome, manual methods,” said Dominelli.

The Solution

• ChannelAdvisor Marketplaces to manage its marketplace business from one user interface

While Dominelli was at a conference, he read about ChannelAdvisor in the program and decided to research the company’s software. After evaluating its technology and speaking with different members of its team, Dominelli decided to give ChannelAdvisor Marketplaces a shot.

“Once I read about ChannelAdvisor, the light bulbs went off,” said Dominelli. “I knew this was a company that we had to do business with.”

With ChannelAdvisor Marketplaces, PinMart could upload its product data information, including titles, descriptions, prices and more, into the ChannelAdvisor platform and have it automatically modified to sell across Amazon, eBay and Rakuten.com Shopping.

The Results

“You would need so many employees to put data together and feed it to all these different marketplaces. If you didn’t have ChannelAdvisor, it would be unmanageable to do,” said Dominelli. “If you’re serious about selling online, you need ChannelAdvisor.”

After seeing success on marketplaces, PinMart started using ChannelAdvisor Digital Marketing to enhance its online advertising efforts and drive traffic to its website. ChannelAdvisor Flex Feeds transforms PinMart’s product data feed to start advertising on sites like Google, Bing, PriceGrabber and more.