Growing beyond the basics
GSI continues to play outside the sports field, adding new categories each year. Today, it services retailers in apparel, health and beauty, sporting goods, consumer electronics, entertainment, jewelry and luxury goods, and home.
To continue growing, Rubin has stepped up the company’s service offerings to meet the more sophisticated e-commerce demands of its partners.
“It’s not that we reinvented ourselves,” Rubin says. “But we offer more value today than we originally did.”
GSI has added multichannel initiatives, customized products, online personalization and international services. And if GSI can’t build it, it partners with others to provide customers with everything from new technology and best-of-breed software to e-commerce customization tools.
“Customization and personalization is a theme we’ve been pushing for a few years,” Rubin says. “We talk to our partners about how they can integrate that into their businesses.”
While Rubin says partners sometimes approach GSI with ways online shoppers can personalize products, GSI’s business management teams are assigned to clients, and together, they brainstorm customization concepts. Rubin figures this will continue to drive growth.
“If we continue with our existing business model, over the next couple of years, the growth for us is enormous,” Rubin says. “We’ve added 10 new partners a year, and I think we will continue to add five to 10 more a year. And we do more for our existing partners.”
GSI builds the relationship side of its business by offering robust services that allow retailers to give their customers the same personal service online as they expect in physical stores.
“(Our clients) want a business partnership and experience,” Rubin says. “We go to our partners and say, ‘Look, not only can we give you great infrastructure, we can help you grow your business.’”
And the partners are buying it. GSI is consistently beating the industry growth average each year and is projecting net revenue of $432 million for fiscal 2005.
Rubin measures success by how much of the e-commerce pie GSI consumes, and its portion is a low-single digit of total U.S. e-commerce sales.
“Our growth mirrors, at a minimum, what the growth of e-commerce has been,” Rubin says.
GSI’s compounded annual growth rate on revenue from 2000 to 2004 was 67 percent.
Growth for both is partners and for GSI is what Rubin’s vision is all about, and he has targeted about 1,000 companies as potential partners.
“We look for the big, established brands that have a lot of meaning in the marketplace,” he says.
The larger the retailer, the more e-commerce business it will do dollarwise and the more that will feed GS
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#x2019;s piggy bank — and reputation. That’s useful because GSI doesn’t market its services; it relies on referrals and interest from retailers who hear about it from other big brands.
Rubin doesn’t expect this demand, or the e-commerce boom, to slow down. Estimating that overall e-commerce represents about 5 percent of total retail, he figures this number will double.
“Lots of things will drive that,” he says, pointing to broadband Internet availability, consumers’ increasing comfort with navigating the Internet and growing trust with online shopping.
What’s more, improved e-commerce services will elevate retailers’ and consumers’ expectations for how they conduct business online.
“Being online is a mandatory thing for companies today,” Rubin says. “It is not an option — consumers demand it. Retail consumer brands need to be there, and that is an important opportunity for us.”
How to reach: www.gsicommerce.com or (610) 491-7000
