Eddie Bauer

Eddie Bauer is a casual lifestyle product retailer that has been a household brand since 1920. In addition to keeping its styles current, it has kept current with constantly changing marketing venues and with technology. To take advantage of the latest sales and marketing opportunity—customers on the World Wide Web—Eddie Bauer has selected Microsoft commerce solutions as its foundation for unique ways to reach and satisfy customers.

The sale of high-quality clothing and other goods, backed by excellent service, has enabled Eddie Bauer to become one of the premier brand names in retail. But the multi-billion-dollar-a-year company is always looking to expand beyond its tried-and-true marketing channels—retail stores and catalog sales—that built the company since 1920.

When the Web arrived, Eddie Bauer began investigating how interactive media could help it reach new customers and retain loyal ones. The result is a successful Web site that runs on the Microsoft® Windows NT® Server operating system with Internet Information Server and Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition. Its Web site is helping Eddie Bauer increase sales and extend its brand image to many more consumers.

"Our original goal was commerce-driven—to sell goods online," says Judy Neuman, divisional vice president of interactive media at Eddie Bauer headquarters in Redmond, Washington. "Commerce is still key to our Web efforts, of course, but equally important are the opportunities for branding and the ability to develop one-to-one and one-to-mass communications with our customers. The Web is a very powerful medium and has become our third sales channel for expanding our business while complementing and enhancing the retail store and print catalog channels."

To get its feet wet in the online marketplace, Eddie Bauer created a “storefront” on America Online in 1995. To expand its options and the amount of control and flexibility it has with its online commerce, the company launched its Web...