Service Merchandise opened its first store in Nashville in 1960, and rose to prominence in the 1970s as the nation's catalog-showroom retailer, achieving annual sales exceeding $4 billion. But by the 1990s business began to decline due to poor branding of the stores, a growing discontent with its catalog-showroom format, and an increasingly competitive market that included discount chains such as Wal-Mart and Zales. Consequently, the company filed for bankruptcy protection under Section 11 in March of 1999. Dot-Com Dilemma To its good fortune, the company had developed a web site that provided an additional opportunity to reach its catalog customer base. However, the existing copy for products did not meet the online consumers' need for adequate information. A diamond ring would be described as "14K gold," or a VCR would be listed as "black." Not surprisingly, sales from the site were not competitive with pure plays such as Amazon.com, Mondera.com or click-and-morter establishments like Target and Zales. Our Strategy With the fourth quarter fast approaching (the project began on August 16, 1999), it was imperative to create product copy detailed enough to satisfy online consumers and give them an impetus to purchase from Service Merchandise. An eight-week action plan was developed to train part-time in-house copywriters to write conceptually-based conversational copy for the web. Style Manuals for every category of merchandise were also created to ensure copy was both consistent and accurate, thereby giving the consumer an additional level of comfort when they purchased products on ServiceMerchandise.com. During that eight-week period, detailed copy for more than 3,000 products had been written, with an additional 2,000 products added in the following months. Results Sales skyrocketed during the fourth quarter to more than 300% over the prior year. As a result, ServiceMerchandise.com was named among the "Top Ten" performing retail web sites of 1999 by the New York Times. In 2001, ServiceMerchandise.com was ranked #6 among retail web sites in the nation, with sales reaching 16 million dollars annually. Editor's note: Ray Zimmerman, the original owner of Service Merchandise, has purchased Service Merchandise out of bankruptcy and has re-launched ServiceMerchandise.com, a tribute to the strength of branding and online sales dominance we helped develop from August of 1999 through January 4, 2002. More Choices. Better Prices. Guaranteed. Only @ Your Service Merchandise.