Case Studies - CopShoes.com

Sales march on for CopShoes.com
UPS driver Warren Kirchhoefer and Matt Alper, owner of CopShoes.com.

Boxes upon boxes of shoes are stored in the CopShoes.com warehouse spanning over 100,000 square feet.

The CopShoes.com shipping clerk uses ShipWorks software to print UPS shipping labels and manage all orders.

From a small office in Austin Texas, Matt Alper remotely manages the customer service end of his rapidly growing online business stationed nearly 1000 miles away in downtown St. Louis, Missouri.

It was just after WWII when Matt’s father and uncle began Alpers’ Jobbing Company, the wholesale operation that started it all. In 1996 Matt Alper, who had years of experience as an IT consultant, had a vision of extending his family’s business to the Internet. That’s when he purchased the CopShoes.com domain name.

CopShoes.com has been a success since going live in August of 2003, offering a wide variety of police shoes, army boots, and uniform shoes, at prices that are a sure-fit for even the most budget conscious individual. Operating order fulfillment from their 100,000 square foot warehouse, they now sell to businesses and individuals world wide.

“Since our first full month in business we have experienced a cumulative growth rate of 25% per month” Matt says, attributing his success to a number of factors including search engine marketing, word of mouth, and the ability to accurately and efficiently manage his order fulfillment and shipping process with ShipWorks.

“For the first two months our shipping clerk manually entered each shipment into UPS WorldShip software. This worked fine for a few weeks, but as we grew it was clear we needed a better way to manage our UPS shipments.”

Matt was in need of a solution that would seamlessly integrate with his Miva Merchant shopping cart system while providing powerful UPS shipping, tracking, and notification features. That’s when he found ShipWorks software - with UPS OnLine® Tools built in.

Armed with a single computer and a DSL connection, the CopShoes.com shipping clerk watches as ShipWorks automatically downloads new orders and prints packing slips. After the order has been packed in the warehouse, a live UPS label is printed with just a few clicks.

All shipping address information is pre-filled by ShipWorks. This dramatically reduces label creation time and virtually eliminates the possibility of manual entry errors. The shipping clerk quickly checks the pre-filled weight field in case there are any last minute changes, and then clicks to request the available rates and services for the shipment. ShipWorks communicates with UPS servers and provides a list of available rates and services including Time in Transit information. The desired shipping method is selected and the label is printed. At the same time, the UPS system automatically sends a shipping notification email to the customer and to Matt’s office in Texas. This entire process takes place in only a few seconds.

With the help of ShipWorks software and UPS OnLine Tools, CopShoes.com is now processing over 100 orders each week, and growing.

“Without ShipWorks and UPS, we couldn’t do it. We can now generate a label with just a couple clicks. And automatic UPS tracking emails have saved untold hours of customer questions about ‘when am I going to get my order.’ We are able to process most orders within one day for items that are in stock. This allows us to maintain a very high level of customer satisfaction.”

The future looks bright for CopShoes.com. As his business continues to grow, Matt is now looking for larger office space in Texas and a new full time employee to manage customer service and phone orders. Given his current success, he is planning to open additional online stores using the same business model, software, and shipping process.

“We are very excited about our future,“ Matt said. “UPS OnLine Tools and ShipWorks software gives us the power to grow our business.”

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