Nectar Boutique is an e-commerce website that sells women and children’s clothing, shoes and other accessories. It also sell household goods, although their specialty is mainly clothing. In addition to selling their products online, they have brick and mortar boutiques situated at two locations.
That is, Claremont and Redlands in California. Nectar Boutique was founded in 2005 by David Kelly and his wife Tricia, initially starting as a designer shop, Jean Boutique, in Redlands. They started selling their products online in 2011, expanding Nectar Boutique countrywide and then worldwide under www.nectarclothing.com. The boutique continues to grow, with the owners planning to open a new store annually (About Nectar Boutique, 2012).
To purchase Nectar Boutique’s products online, all the customer has to do is log in to the boutique’s website, www.nectarclothing.com. The site contains all the details concerning the products for sale, including pictures, sizes, prices and payment methods and options. The customer then chooses the product he wishes to purchase and informs customer care service via e-mail or telephone.
After informing customer care service on the specifications and preferences of the product, the customer provides his postal details or physical address to which she wants the product delivered. Specifications could be in terms of the color and size. The most commonly used payment method is through credit card.
The customer provides Nectar Boutique with his credit card number, facilitating the payment of the product together with the shipping costs. Once this is done, the product is delivered via post or to the customer’s doorstep, depending on the distance from the nearest store (About Nectar Boutique, 2012).
As a business entity, Nectar Boutique is very reliable. This is shown by the positive reviews that the boutique gets from its customers. They have fine tuned their product mix with experience in the industry stretching several years. The boutique associates only with manufacturers of brands that make the best quality products at affordable prices. Such brands provide them with products that are of high quality and of the latest fashions at affordable wholesale prices.
This enables them to sell their products cheaply. One attractive feature of their products is that they sell their products both online and through physical stores. This provides customers with a wide variety of avenues to make purchases. In addition, they offer free shipping for bulk purchases exceeding a given amount. They also offer free gifts for every purchase (About Nectar Boutique, 2012).
Perhaps the only unfavorable aspect about Nectar Boutique is that they do not have many stores located within the United States. Although they plan to expand in the future, for now customers have to contend with just two brick and mortar stores, all located in California. Moreover, the shipping charges increase for products ordered via the internet from outside the state. However, these are minor setbacks that Nectar Boutique is putting a lot of effort to overcome as soon as possible.
E-commerce has some aspects that are both favorable and non-favorable. According to Fecenko and Huntley (2003), a company such as Nectar Boutique can have a difficult time convincing people to purchase their products online. This is because there is a lot of competition, with companies having to win the trust of customers before they can make any sales.
Having customers access an e-commerce website is one thing, but making them provide their credit card number and make a purchase is another thing altogether. However, e-commerce enables businesses to reach more customs, since there are no geographical limitations.
References
About Nectar Boutique. (2012). Nectar Boutique. Retrieved from https://nectarclothing.com/
Fecenko, M. & Huntley, A. M. (2003). E-commerce: corporate-commercial aspects. Toronto, Canada: LexisNexis