Total Tools boasts a 2000 percent increase in ecommerce sales

Australia's independent professional tools retailer, Total Tools saw a 2000 percent increase in ecommerce sales boost in its ecommerce after offshoring talent to the Philippines.

The retailer opted to hire teams based offshore to assist with operational hurdles and propel the development of its ecommerce business.

Total Tools partnered with offshoring solutions company, MicroSourcing, beginning with only two graphic designers but ultimately leading to a 2000 percent increase in ecommerce sales, a 200 percent increase in online conversion rates and a 300 percent increase in website traffic over two years [pdf].

Speaking during a NORA webinar, Future Workplace Transformation, Darren Gunton, general manager of marketing and ecommerce at Total Tools said the business moved offshoring “about six years ago”. 

“At the time, we had a very small marketing team, we were starting down the path of transforming our ecommerce experience and we had two people in the ecommerce team,” Gunton said. 

“We had a big problem of trying to load a lot of images on the website and we needed to do a lot of work around them and we just needed graphic design resources,” he said. 

Gunton said while there were internal graphic designers, “we didn't have any budget” and “everyone was demanding” work be completed.  

“I calculated out I think it was going to take my design team, if they dropped everything and allocated say one person, it was going to take two years for them to go through all of the images and start working through them” Gunton said. 

This led to the MicroSourcing partnership and outsourcing work even resulted in Gunton putting costs on the company credit card in the early years, placing it under ‘meeting expenses or something ridiculous like that”. 

Gunton said while he has done “outsourcing [and] offshoring before” outsourcing can lead to issues as people change roles, however offshoring “like we pick the staff, we hire the staff, we interview the staff, we develop the staff.” 

“They're our team, it's just that we're using MicroSourcing to employ them on our behalf,” Gunton said. 

 “We can develop them and they get that organisational knowledge, the industry knowledge and they get better and better … you can develop them to be the best they can be.”

Gunton said “the first thing we do” with its saving is hire more people rather than one, allowing Total Tools to achieve more work. 

“We get a whole lot of stuff more that we can do and be a lot more productive. There are lots of little benefits from that way of thinking. 

“We've got a customer service team, which used to be out here in Melbourne, with people just taking the phone call in between doing other work.”

He added since the company “can get more staff without breaking the bank, we've got them working all the hours that we open in retail”. 

“The other thing that we tend to do is we hire more experienced people. A lot of the roles we're getting senior people,” Gunton said. 

“It's amazing the amount of capacity I've got now because of doing this. It's the amount of talent that I can afford and the sort of time coverage I get,” Gunton added.

He said “all the people we had six years ago are still with us” and “we've got pretty good retention as well”. 

Gunton said the company “wouldn't be where we are today” including its ecommerce goals, without its outsourcing approach. 

“The other side is we couldn't have found the resources -there are certain roles like loyalty or digital marketing that are hard to find people for in Australia. 

“It's just it's the talent pool is shrunk. They're out there, but they're all employed. 

“Our employment rates are so low that you just can't get the talent. We would have been stuck on both levels. We wouldn't be where we are today without it.”