Sanrio Taps Demandware for E-Commerce Site

Sanrio Inc. will launch a new retail Web site using Demandware's merchandising platform.

The new site at www.sanrio.com is scheduled to debut this holiday season and will target customers in North America.

"The new platform gives me the ability to upsell, cross sell and create offer and promotional codes," said Geraldine Wong, director of e-commerce at Sanrio, New York. "It is also really important to have new reporting tools."

Sanrio Inc. is the North American subsidiary of the worldwide group of Sanrio companies that develops, distributes and licenses 50,000 gift, stationery, accessory and fashion items for girls and women. Its products are sold in 120 Sanrio boutiques and retailers like Target, Macy's and Neiman Marcus.

E-commerce services company Demandware, Wolburn, MA, is providing Sanrio with merchandising tools such as guided search, promotions management and A/B testing. The e-commerce firm is launching three new products this fall including a merchandising faceted search tool, the addition of Google Sitemaps technology to its search engine optimization tools.

Other new tools include a master catalog that lets retailers share catalog data with corporate storefronts from a central repository. The new price books let merchants vary pricing for the same item based on a customer group or source code for those referred by a shopping comparison engine, an e-mail campaign or an affiliate site.

The new site will be marketed through store inserts and receipts. The launch is mainly intended for merchandising capabilities, but eventually will introduce new products.

"Holiday is a very important time for us and we are working on this site as a marketing effort," Ms. Wong said.