Revenue at The Party People has increased fourfold since partnering with Internet domain registrar and web hosting company, GoDaddy, to deliver an updated website.
“Taking The Party People online with GoDaddy has been absolutely fantastic for our business,” CEO, Dean Salakas says.
The Party People has a very broad and diverse customer demographic, catering to birthdays, baby showers, weddings, sporting events and anyone celebrating an event or special occasion.
Before taking the business online, The Party People only operated within the Sydney metro area with shopfronts in Drummoyne and Sans Souci.
“This limited us geographically and meant we could only count people within the vicinity of one of our stores as customers. But going online has transformed the business into a global operation, and we now sell to customers in Africa, Japan, America, the UK and more,” Salakas says.
The Party People made its original online debut over a decade ago and were the first online party store at a time that it was a relatively unexplored space for the industry.
“From a relatively early stage, we identified the future importance of an online presence and that it could change how people shopped. We wanted to be able to provide a service for people who either didn’t have the time to visit our shop in person or lived too far away.
“The retail industry has fundamentally changed with online technology and we identified that was a great way for us to expand our audience and cater to more people, more conveniently.”
However, Salakas did admit that taking the business online was a big decision, given the significant cost and time investment.
“In the past you had to rent web space and code using HTML, yet today there are online tools for people to easily get started creating their online presence without knowing how to code.
“Our experience with GoDaddy has been much easier and less costly than we ever thought; the investment has paid off and we haven’t regretted it for a second. Taking our business online with GoDaddy has definitely been one of the best things we’ve done to help grow our business.”
By Emily Bencic
This article first appeared on retailbiz.com.au
