O’Jaye Williams
Case Study, Unit IV

“The Cliptomania Web Store”

Cliptomania has a uniqueness being that it started out as an online retailer at the peak of the internet boom. Although they are currently operating in business, they were bold enough to face the storm by providing a unique product that wasn't available in stores or online. It is worth noting that they were successful because of their market strategy and not on their technology. During this time many other online retail companies provided a much better overall web user interface experience; however, the product and service provided by Cliptomania made a major difference. Perhaps if the company had the ability to fund better systems at the onset of their business they would have had the possibility to grow much larger since customer's want service and a great product. However, they also want it to be easy to buy.
The company made a great effort at putting together some basic HTML web pages-- they had no previous experience in creating such content. It is apparent that they understood if their product was successful in local retail stores there was likely a much larger demographic that would take interest in buying their product. Their handling of financial transactions was one of the major issues they faced with their initial e-business venture. Initially, they took phone orders. Yet, the ability to manage all of the orders demanded cost labor and time. The company did not have this budgeted in at startup. They actually chose Paymentech as the payment processor due to the hope of integrating with them successfully in a quick manner. However, they were unaware that the internet and their global audience would create a greater need to manage both international and fraudulent transactions. Upon receiving an order they had no way of verifying the legitimacy of the shipping or billing address.