Bethlehem-based Strahman Valves opened a spigot for e-commerce last week with the inauguration of on-line sales to the company’s worldwide customer base for its industrial hoses and valves, which are widely used in the wine and beverage, pharmaceutical, biomedical, refining, pulp and paper, mining, chemical, and other industries.
Sales for Strahman Valves, which also maintains an operation in France, have remained strong for the 87-year-old company, now under its 4th generation of family ownership, according to Kevin Carroll, vice present of the wash-down business unit, which sells the company’s line of high-pressure cleaning systems. “Recessions never seem to hurt us,” he says, citing continuing demand in pharmaceutical and beverage industries and the well-known name of the brand.
Indeed, while the company doesn’t release its sales figures, Carroll said that it hopes to reach revenues of $50 million in two years, and the company’s use of the Internet–both as a marketing vehicle and a point of sale–appear to figure strongly in the strategy for reaching that goal. He noted that even before e-commerce was added last week, redevelopment of the company’s website in recent years had already drawn a lot of direct business to the company. “We sell commodity items, and they’re not hard to sell on the website,” Carroll said.
Allowing clients to create their own accounts and make direct purchases with credit cards just seemed like a logical addition to the site, he said. This is a feature many e-commerce sites are now doing with the help of pos companies so it is only natural that Strahmen Valves has decided to integrate it into their website. Improved point of sale has also “cut back on some of the workloads that customer service gets hit with.” This goes to show how utilizing enterprise pos systems will add to a business and create a happy customer base.
Just how much might it add to the bottom line? Carroll says he isn’t ready to pull a number out of the air but added, “If we get 10 percent that would be great. Or it could be more than that,” a portion that would place the Web site’s share of sales around $5 million in the next couple of years.
Source: Strahman Valves, Kevin Carroll
Writer: Joseph Plummer
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