Jun 2, 2010

Making the WebworkBy Teresa F. LindemanPost-Gazette.com

Pennsylvania — At the Toadflax store in Shadyside, there are candles to be ordered, longtime customers who need deliveries and students wandering in from nearby Carnegie Mellon University or Pitt to pick up Kiehl’s body care products. On the Web, the store’s site says, “Coming soon.”

Co-owner Jeff Pierce doesn’t think Toadflax’s low profile on the Internet has been a problem, although he sees the potential online.

Meanwhile, over in an office park in Churchill, a small army of programmers, designers and assorted executives are working on a new service they hope will appeal to small specialty gift and home goods stores like Toadflax by making it easy to build an online presence on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The team at Snap!Retail sees social media as the latest version of all those personal relationships that small retailers have relied on forever to keep customers coming back. The idea is to build a business by helping stores be personable and informative online without leaving the cash register untended.

“Marketing has fundamentally changed,” said Ted Teele, CEO of the venture launched Jan. 1 as a spinoff from OneCoast, a sales rep agency that works with vendors and retailers in the gift, home and collegiate industries. That company’s offices included one in the Pittsburgh area that helped develop technology used in things such as e-mail marketing.

Now Snap!Retail, which has been hiring in recent months, has 45 people in its Churchhill office. Among its services, the company runs an online marketplace where retailers can shop for products from dozens of vendors — such as Mud Pie, Le Petit Chalet and Timeworks — and then place a single order. The vendors pay a commission.

Beginning in June, Snap!Retail plans to launch the social media marketing tool meant to help retailers sell the goods they’ve ordered.

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