Volante Online was launched in December. January's sales were double those in the first month, and February's figures are on track for a further doubling.
The company is using a three-pronged strategy to build its online customer base. Firstly, there is a direct marketing effort starting with telemarketing and direct mail, followed up with outdoor and print advertising.
Secondly, vendors are providing Volante with sales leads, especially regarding SMEs.
Cherny explained that vendors are particularly interested in this market segment, which tends to buy "white box" rather than brand-name systems. Because Volante already has its own call centre and other systems in place, the conversion rate of leads to sales is very good, so vendors like using the company in this way.
Finally, Volante has extended its systems to serve the enterprise market to support marketing to virtual communities.
The first example is general practitioners, but negotiations with other groups are underway. According to Cherny, there are considerable advantages to building an e-commerce operation targeting SMEs on top of a successful enterprise sales organisation. The existing call centre and logistics systems are shared.
Vendor involvement has also been key, he said. The tier one vendors are keen to improve their position in the SME market, and working with a national reseller gives them a closer relationship with the customers than they would get with the vendor-distributor-reseller model.
