Sorry that it’s been so long since my last post, but I do have a day job, you know. Here’s this week’s question, from “S.” in Piscataway, NJ.

Dear Feed Doctor,
I notice in a lot of your posts you have functions inside of functions. Can I do that with any function?

Well, S., the answer is: Yes. Mostly.
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Hot on the heals of BlueBay Electronics, another ChannelAdvisor customer has been recognised for their online success in 2007.

This time the award goes to one of our UK customers, Schuhstore, who just picked up the first ever ‘Auction Seller of the Year 2007′ award at eBay’s recent Backstage VIP party in London.

The team at Schuh, led by ecommerce whiz kid himself, Dan Lumb, has exceeded all expectations this year, moving over one hundred thousand pairs of shoes in the last 12 months through the eBay channel. Yes, you read that correctly, in the last 12 months they have amassed a massive 111,500 postivie feedbacks (although that number is increasing as I type this!)

We’ve been working with Schuh for just about a year now and we’ve enjoyed every moment of it. It’s people like Dan and the Schuh team that make us excited to come into work in the morning and we love the constant pressure they put on us to improve. We couldn’t be happier that their success has been recognised in such a appropriate way.

Congratulations to the Schuh team from everyone at ChannelAdvisor - great job!

p.s. if you’re after some light entertainment, be sure to check out the rather strange, but amusing ‘silent movie‘ on their eBay blog…

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This week, “J.” in Winslow, AZ, writes:

Dear Feed Doctor,
I sell model cars, and one of the attributes I want to put in my feed is the year of the car. Unfortunately, I don’t have any separate data field for the year; however, the title DOES have the year in it. Can I write a business rule that will pull the year out of the title? My titles are usually something like “Red 1978 Mercury Cougar.”

Well, at first glance, that doesn’t look very challenging, does it? I mean, if the pattern is just “Color Year etc.,” then we could use a function like GETPART to split the title into single words, and take the second one. But that would be too easy! Besides, it’s dangerous to generalize too much; what if J. has a “Metallic Mint Green 1963 Pontiac Tempest?” Nope, I’m afraid we’re going to have to deploy something a bit more powerful: a regular expression.

I’ve mentioned regular expressions (or “regexes”) before, calling them the “Swiss Army knife of text processing.” Well, in this post, I’m going to show how a regex can be a Deus ex Machina that will save J. from a poorly-plotted, yet certain, doom.
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There are good customers, great customers and then there are over-achievers — customers that help you evolve by constantly pushing your boundaries not only technologically but also the products and services you offer (”help me, help you”).

Blue Bay Electronics, founded by Daren Thompson and Doug Lincicome, is one such online retailer that has grown rapidly by automating their eBay business and quickly adopting (and mastering) additional online channels. Of course it also helps that Doug is technically savvy, very driven, persistent and rarely ever sleeps. I know he has his ChannelAdvisor “joined-at-the-hip account manager” John Hendricks on speed dial (and vice versa) to always explore new opportunities.

Blue Bay is featured in this month’s Web Wholesaler with a great article on how they got their start and what they’re focusing on today to continue to grow the company.

Congratulations Darren and Doug from ChannelAdvisor, very cool to see you guys getting recognized.

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Even though I would consider ChannelAdvisor somewhat of a webinar expert, I am still surprised at times about how some topics can really strike a cord with online retailers (unfortunately my proposed series on tragic German literature figures of the 12th century has been postponed indefinitely).

Our July Amazon webinar (click here to download a recorded version) is a case in point. At the conclusion of the webinar as well as the next few days following it, Tim Mirick from Amazon, our in-house Amazon expert Jonathon Davis and I fielded many questions from merchants on the overall opportunity, the Amazon Webstore and Fulfillment By Amazon products, and strategies for really hitting it out of the park.

In response to the many inquiries I am going to start an Amazon De-Mystery Machine series of posts reviewing the most common seller questions (aligned somewhat with the sales life cycle). Note that while I will tragically skip my Holiday 2007 Amazon wishlist I will also not review if and when it makes sense to look at Amazon as part of a multi-channel portfolio - there are not many online retailers that can afford NOT to market their products to the 75+ million convenience shoppers that turn to Amazon for their online shopping needs.

Last, but not least, I need audience participation so please send me any and all Amazon-related questions that you have and I will try to reply directly or through a blog post. Without further a due, let’s kick this off: (more…)

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