Heimerdinger Cutlery.com Screen Shot

In Mid 2008, Heimerdinger Cutlery got together with Louisville Web Group to not only bring about a change to their existing webstore, but to overhaul their entire business. Breaking everything out into several stages, the culmination of the project(s) has come to bear fruit for the world to see. HeimerdingerCutlery.com is now live, and racking up more and more sales every day!

Step 1

A new POS (point of sale) system – When LWebG came into the picture, Heimerdinger Cutlery was doing business much as they had done for the past 50 years of their over 150 year existence. Everything, regardless of an internet order, phone order, or a walk-in was written down onto a specially printed notepad and placed in-line in a box for processing. It was almost impossible to keep track of inventory, and factors such as ROI and sales trends were a pain to compute.

The old Heimerdinger webstore

The first thing we did was to gather information on what they had and what they needed. The POS system that was in place wasn’t even in development anymore, didn’t interface with their existing webstore, did hardly any reports, didn’t have any peripherals (cash drawer, scanner, card reader), and most of all did not interface with the Quickbooks Financial software that was running in the office. After doing a bit of research about what their needs were, we came down with a solution of purchasing Quickbooks POS Pro and suggested several peripheral packages from local-based POS supply companies. Heimerdinger ended up with a great deal on some of the software and hardware and were well on their way to a more contemporary workflow.

Step 2

Phone orders and preparing to sync everything together.

Step two of the process (besides training) was to get the framework for connecting the forthcoming new website with the new POS. At the same time, we needed to find a way for Heimerdinger’s employees to take phone orders at the same time that customers were checking out in the brick-and-mortar store. After some more research, we decided to suggest using Atandra’s T-Hub software. Certified as a Gold Intuit Developer, Atandra had numerous message board reviews that were positive. I installed the software on 4 of the in-store computers and commenced syncing the POS’s database with the T-Hub software. Within a short amount of time, Heimerdinger went from writing everything by hand to having the ability to make multiple real-time sales tied in with their inventory levels.

Step 3

Heimerdinger Cutlery sample product page

The Webstore. The biggest part of the project. The then-current/original webstore was built on a Cold Fusion foundation and hosted by Rick at Intent.net. This arrangement was working, but not necessarily the best setup at the time. The site had gone done for as much as a week in recent memory, and stability and ease of use was a definite desire. The root of the site was managed partially by Heimerdinger Cutlery (via Frontpage) and partially by Intent.net.

When we were in the process of making our plan during Step 1, we had narrowed down the webstore choices to OsCommerce and Magento. Ultimately, we chose OsCom to be the backbone of the new webstore. This is because Magento is pretty bulky (and at times very slow) unless you have a pure dedicated server environment. While we offered (at the time) various levels of shared hosting, we did not offer a dedicated server nor was that really in the budget. OsCom became the framework of choice.

Over several months of review and testing, the site went live on June 4th, 2009 – several days after the projected launch date. I wish I could say that it was due to the enormity of the project, but everything was pushed back due to a very, very unhelpful payment processor. After a late switch to Authorize.net, the store was ready for action.