California Apparel News

Seattle-based technology start-up Mercent has released a new Web vehicle that gives retailers access to a broad base of leading online marketplaces through one entry point.

The company’s Mercent Commerce System connects retailers to the heavy hitters of online shopping—Amazon.com, AOL Shopping, Yahoo! Shopping, Shopping.com, MSN Shopping, BizRate.com, PriceGrabber.com, NexTag, mySimon and Froogle—which have a combined customer base of more than 115 million.

The company’s software coordinates data exchanges between retailers’ existing e-commerce systems. The goal is to allow retailers to gain exposure and save on implementation costs by giving them broad access through one entry point. Mercent has already enlisted Foothill Ranch, Calif.–based Wet Seal Inc., Vernon, Calif.–based Lucky Brand Dungarees, Proflowers.com and Shane Co.

Company founder Eric T. Best, a former Amazon.com executive, said the time is right for multichannel retailing because the market has evolved to a stable level.

Cambridge, Mass.–based Forrester Research Inc. estimated that online shopping will reach $144 billion and apparel sales will jump 42 percent by the end of the year.

“A few years back, people wrote off online commerce. It’s doubled in size since,” Best said. “When you see traditional retailing growing in the low single-digit percentages and then see what’s happening with online shopping, it’s real exciting.”

Recently, Hoffman Estates, Ill.–based Sears Roebuck & Co. said it will expand its online retailing to include the company’s full line of apparel in the fourth quarter of this year. Sears currently sells only French Toast school uniforms and a few specialty items on its Web site, www.sears.com.

Bentonville, Ark–based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. also said it is expanding its online apparel offerings.

With the heady competition and rising demand, Best said specialty retailers are looking for more cost-effective ways to do business online.

“The costs are going up [to go online],” he noted. “We provide a single point of integration. We handle all the fraud detection and get the financial settlements back to the retailer.”

Best founded Mercent after developing an integration guide at Amazon. He gained insight into the Amazon platform and at the same time saw how retailers were rapidly adopting emerging software technology. Connecting a retailer’s order and inventory systems through Mercent’s data management tools—which include tools for file conversion, queuing, logging and filtering—was the starting point for the company.

The system allows retailers to process more than one million orders per day. Implementations can take as little as 30 minutes and cost as little as $15,000, but the average national retailer can expect to spend $30,000 to $50,000 on implementations taking from one to 12 weeks. Wet Seal E-commerce Manager Nirbhay Gupta said the company went from meeting with Mercent to putting a Wet Seal store on Amazon.com within a week.

Retailers are required to have a Microsoft Windows server. Mercent supports standard protocols, including HTTP, FTP, SSL, XML and SOAP. The company also provides value-added services, including program management, data mapping, software development and integration, storefront design, and optimization of promotional feeds such as search keywords and product categorization.For more information, visit www.mercent.com. —Robert McAllister