Happily ever after is big business for mega department chain Belk. "Revamping a bridal registry that tracks more than 50,000 registered brides is not a simple endeavor. Every day, we run more than a hundred concurrent bridal sessions. Each registry can include any of the 186,000 products currently held in the Belk inventory database. In a given week we may drop an extra 1,000 to 1,500 products on to the bridal registry site. To manage this well we neeeded a grat software solution." Jay Carothers, Belk's President, eCommerce.

Conclusion

Blue Martini became involved in developing the Belk site on November 15, 2002. "The actual go-live date was January 5, 2003," recalls Colby Sheridan. "Now we're in a maintenance mode, rolling out new versions, and new functionality. At this stage we are down to about six resources -- a couple of programmers, a few systems people, a few data people, and a design person. Belk plans to devote about a half a dozen people to keep the site up and running, and for managing staging and promotions. When you look at all the business they run though this site every day, it is a very effective business proposition.

"Belk.com combines the speed, convenience and accessibility of on-line shopping with the unique merchandise selection, customer service and reputation for which Belk stores are known and respected," Carothers says. "Customers can now shop on-line at Belk 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we can extend our business to new customers in areas of the country where we currently do not have stores. Our goal is to provide visitors to our site the same satisfying shopping experience as they have when visiting one of our stores."