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Electrical appliances from Swan have seen a huge increases in sales following the company’s decision to embrace eCommerce channels as its primary sales route.
Using a multi-channel approach including an enhanced website and pure play online retailers such as OnBuy.com, Swan has capitalised on the online retailing opportunity and as a result has driven a year-on-year gross sales increase of over 50%.
Paul Simpson, owner and sales director of Swan said: “Like many retailers in the UK, we have had almost total dependency on eCommerce channels over the past year and so we were fortunate to have already established ourselves online before the pandemic hit. B2C sales have increased by over 500% in the past 12 months and our sales through partnerships with pure play online marketplaces have grown in excess of 60%.
“Our digital transformation over the past few years, accelerated by the closure of non-essential retail, has been key to the survival of the brand. By using online channels and marketplaces to retail, we have brought a heritage, British brand into the 21st century. The digital transformation in the last few years has allowed us to connect and communicate with our retailers much more efficiently.”
Swan has enjoyed the majority of its online retailing success with British online marketplace, OnBuy. The brand begun selling with the marketplace in 2019 and has witnessed sales growth accelerate faster with OnBuy than any other pure play online platform. Swan saw year on year sales growth of over 1,000% on OnBuy from 2019 to 2020, with their best-selling range Retro receiving twice as many orders through OnBuy from one year to the next.
Swan trades an average of £30,000 per month on OnBuy and this is projected to grow beyond £50,000 this year. In less than two years, the kitchen brand hassold 6,200 products through OnBuy alone.
Swan has 600 active product listings on OnBuy, with small domestic appliances performing best, selling 4,100 toasters and kettles alone. Swan has also created multipack options with OnBuy to cater to customer demands, allowing customers to buy multiple items as a set in one order.
Paul added: “We were initially referred to OnBuy through the Department of International Trade and we’ve been really impressed with how it has supported our sales over the past couple of years.
“Working with OnBuy has hugely broadened our customer base and enabled our department to sell in new ways. We’re now appealing to first-home owners and trendy millennials as a result of selling through eCommerce platforms – and it’s also great to be working with another British business.”
Cas Paton, founder and CEO of OnBuy, said: “We have worked hard over the past four years to optimise our offering for brands and are really pleased Swan is benefiting from those efforts.
“We are providing brands with an alternative marketplace to consider as they explore additional online retail platforms. OnBuy provides brands with a quality eCommerce function that is secure and trusted.”
Evidence from recent months suggest that Swan’s online sales will accelerate even further in 2021, with the first half of the brand’s financial year recording twice as many sales as the same period last year.
This success is mirrored in OnBuy’s own achievements. OnBuy announced its best year so far in 2020, which saw it achieve 605% year to date growth. The marketplace continues to grow and achieved 830% year on year growth in Februarythis year.
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