efore the ‘90s, brick and mortar stores sold only two things: bricks and mortar. With the advent of the World Wide Web and the electronic commerce that the internet enabled, the adjective became necessary to describe what had been the only kind of stores, give or take a mail-order catalog, since stores were invented.

Ecommerce has permanently transformed the global market. It empowers people to use computers, tablets, smartphones, and other smart devices to purchase virtually anything—from everyday necessities to custom items and hard-to-find collectibles.

Brick-and-mortar businesses are leveraging the power of the internet to reach new markets, streamline operations, and enhance customer experiences. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ecommerce saw a significant bump in activity—and the trend is destined to continue. According to the US Census Bureau, ecommerce sales were 15.6 percent of the country’s total retail sales in 2023. The bureau projected this percentage to increase to 20.6 percent by 2027. Current US ecommerce sales are approximately $300 billion, with Amazon.com accounting for 40 percent of this.

Businesses nationwide are expanding their physical operations to support online shopping, self-serve digital tools, and other forms of ecommerce. In Alaska, for example, Summit Spice and Tea Company purchased an existing online business; ARG Industrial (formerly Alaska Rubber Group) developed an innovative digital solution; and Alaska Arms launched its own website to replace an ecommerce platform.

A few years ago, Summit bought an online ecommerce gift box and specialty food store, Alaska Artisanal. The strategic expansion enabled the company to reach a new market and better serve its existing customers. With the acquisition, Summit was able to quickly add an online store, along with inventory management and order processing and fulfillment systems that facilitate both retail and online sales. Today the online store features hundreds of Summit’s teas and spices, a variety of Alaska-made specialty foods, and Alaska Artisanal’s gift boxes.

“Alaska Artisanal was a good fit for Summit,” says Summit’s owner, DeeAnn Apgar. “We were looking for a way to upgrade our online storefront, and the focus on Alaska-made specialty foods fit right in with our niche.”

The initial idea was to develop an ecommerce platform to display product information, with the goal of combining local product availability and value-added services. By the fall of 2020, ARG Industrial had launched a new website that fit the bill. The platform—created by Unilog of Pennsylvania—couldn’t have come at a better time, as the pandemic precluded in-person interactions with customers. “We couldn’t get out to see our customers, and in some cases our customers didn’t want to come in and see us,” Mortensen says. “And without having digital tools, a lot of distributors were stuck and saw an impact to their business.”

An employee-owned business, ARG Industrial provides hoses and fittings for hydraulic, industrial, food and beverage, chemical, and petroleum applications, along with lifting and rigging products. The company’s ecommerce platform created an entirely new way to present products to customers. Although it didn’t produce immediate online revenue, the site generated a flurry of activity from people researching the company and its product offerings.

But the website was just the first step of ARG Industrial’s digital transformation journey. That’s because, in addition to selling off-the-shelf products, the company specializes in custom fabrication. Hence, it needed a digital method to facilitate a process for customers to understand and order custom assemblies. “We’re taking multiple different products from sometimes disparate manufacturers and putting them together to make an assembly, a wholly new product that solves a problem for a customer,” Mortensen explains. “And we needed a way to represent that in a digital way.”

Thus, ARG Industrial developed the industry’s first online assembly configuration engine, enabling customers to self-serve. The ARG Hose Builder translates the company’s internal knowledge into a tool, built around software that allows customers to walk through a process, answer a few questions, and custom build safe, effective assemblies online. “It’s created a whole other separate company, called Intellibuild, which we set up around this piece of software, and it’s being marketed to the industry,” Mortensen says. “It’s a pretty exciting digital tool, and it helped take our company in a direction we hadn’t originally thought of.”

To enhance the ecommerce platform, ARG Industrial has developed additional self-serve options like online invoice payment and reviewing and accepting quotes. Larger customers can take advantage of punchout catalogs to employ their own systems to place orders, which are then processed digitally by the company. These enhancements are all designed to provide customers with a more comprehensive and user-friendly digital experience.

Alaska Arms, which manufactures firearm accessories in Big Lake, also needed an effective ecommerce solution for its business. The company had used Shopify for many years, with unsatisfactory results. The platform often misunderstood Alaska Arms’ products and blocked sales due to its internal firearms-related policies. “It was frustrating and ridiculous,” says Morris Melani, Alaska Arms’ owner. “The fees were very high, and the [sales] conversion rate wasn’t particularly high, so it wasn’t the better route for me go.”

The solution was to migrate from Shopify to BigCommerce, with Alaska Arms launching its new ecommerce site in 2023. The website features intuitive navigation, fast-loading pages, captivating visuals to showcase its products, and a seamless checkout process, providing an enhanced customer experience. Building the site was a positive move for the company. “Basically, all I have is ecommerce because I live in a village in Alaska,” Melani explains. “It’s a great way to get exposure. My sales since I transferred over have been up about 300 percent.”

One of the initial hurdles Alaska Arms faced when enhancing its online presence was finding a company with the right expertise to develop the new website. The site would need flawless functionality, a seamless checkout process, and excellent technical support. Another essential element is customer service, especially after the sale.

“It’s one thing to sell someone something; the next important thing is customer support,” says Melani, who has been manufacturing firearm accessories for about fifteen years and has been a member of the American Custom Gunmakers Guild for nearly forty years.

Generating online exposure is a constant challenge for Alaska Arms, which specializes in making custom metal accessories such as scopes, triggers, and floor plates. Melani sells these parts to a wide spectrum of customers, including dangerous-game hunters in Africa, Europe, Australia, and Canada. To reach his target market, he relies on advertising in gun magazines as well as blogs, YouTube videos, search engine optimization, and other digital marketing tactics. “Just having a website is not enough; you’ve got to be able to get it in front of people,” Melani says. “You’ve got to have those clicks; conversion rate is critical.”

For ARG Industrial, customer adoption of digital tools began slowly, but it’s now rising rapidly as more businesses source products online. ARG Industrial encountered initial resistance from employees, too, who viewed the digital platform as a potential threat to their jobs. They were concerned that customers’ ability to self-serve would reduce the need for salespeople.

But over the years, employees have come to understand that digital tools allow them to offload repetitive and sometimes tedious tasks to focus on relationship building and opportunity finding. Consequently, this has led to greater acceptance of the ecommerce platform. “Our customer-facing employees see the digital tools as force multipliers for them, not as a threat,” Mortensen says.

One of the issues Summit faced when expanding its online presence was deciding what to offer in the ecommerce store. “The retail store has much more than teas, spices, and Made in Alaska products, but we needed to prioritize what we could add to the website,” Apgar explains. “We realized that those three categories were what really made our store unique.”

There were technical difficulties with designing the website. The company has three locations—a retail store, ecommerce site, and wholesale program—so setting up the technical and inventory side of the site was extremely tricky. “It took a lot of planning on the front end to determine how to present these options to the ecommerce customer, and then how to track and manage the bulk inventory for retail and wholesale,” Apgar says. “We’re still working on finding the best solution.”

Ecommerce entails more than simply connecting buyers and sellers; it requires a vast, often invisible, infrastructure to keep it running. Companies also must be able to balance the growth of their online business with their physical locations.

At Summit, integrating the retail store and website has been relatively seamless. For the most part, Apgar says, the web sales are “additive” to its physical store traffic, so the company has not had much trouble balancing the two. However, she says, “I think the hardest part is maintaining good inventory tracking. The store also provides a great pick-up location for website customers who prefer that option.”

Apgar adds, “A full ecommerce site is an absolute must these days, but nothing can replace the in-store experience for discovering new favorites. We’ll continue to invest in the physical store and use the website to expand our reach beyond our local customer base.”

ARG Industrial is also incorporating its online business with physical locations to create a smooth customer experience. The company is implementing quick-response (QR) codes in showrooms, allowing customers to instantly access product information and see their custom pricing—if they’re logged into their account.

Order pickup is another way ARG Industrial is bridging the gap between physical and digital customer experiences. It has introduced “will-call” pick up lockers. Customers can purchase products online or over the phone, receive a notification when their order is ready, and pick it up from a secure locker. “They don’t have to come stand in line and ask somebody if their order’s ready,” Mortensen explains. “They walk in and scan the code that they receive via text. The door pops open, and they take their product.”

ARG Industrial’s Intellibuild platform is proving to be a helpful sales tool for customers, and it’s also a valuable training solution for employees. This reduces the time required for new hires—especially those with limited industry knowledge—to become proficient.

Younger employees are typically more accustomed to using digital tools. “They have a tool that’s there to help them do their job,” Mortensen says. “They’re grasping that and becoming valuable to the company very quickly.”

At Alaska Arms, the new website provides customers with a direct and easy way to peruse its products—including suggestions for related items. “I try to offer a compatible product, so there’s always an opportunity for an upsell,” Melani says. “It puts relevant products in front of them.”

The ecommerce site enables Alaska Arms to engage with customers without the expense of a traditional physical storefront. This allows Melani to operate a small shop with just himself and computer-controlled machinery for manufacturing parts. Customers can browse the inventory online, make a purchase, and then visit the shop to have their item installed. While there, they can also receive a firearms safety check and other value-added services.

Melani attributes much of the success of his one-man enterprise to the impact of the internet. He says, “This is all possible because of ecommerce.”