When Geoffrey Shickle’s son Gregory gave him an Internet domain name for Christmas last year, this Burnham-on-Sea shoe shop owner little knew what an amazing impact the gift would have. For this was the beginning of a process that has already seen the turnover of his business grow by over 40%, with orders flooding in from all over the UK and overseas.

Geoffrey has managed Shickle Shoes since 1966, when he decided at the age of 20 to work there for a couple of months while between jobs. Since then he has built it into one of the West Country’s most respected shoe stores, specialising in upmarket brands like Van Dal, Rohde and Grenson.

As he says, “This wasn’t enough for Gregory, though. He badgered me for years to go online, but it was his Christmas present that really sparked me into action.”

The domain name Geoffrey received is www.footwear4you.co.uk, which went live in mid-June following much work building, preparing and launching the website.

“The most important initial task was to find the right company to create and host the site,” says Geoffrey. “With the advice of Connecting Somerset, who also gave us some much appreciated financial assistance, we found Site Makers in Hambridge, who really grasped what we wanted. We appointed them in the spring, and were ready for launch in just a few months.”

In retrospect, Geoffrey has been particularly impressed by Site Makers’ advice. “They made the point very strongly that to make the most of an Internet business you need to spend as much getting people to your site through search engines like Google as you do on building it. I’m certain that our excellent start, far better than we expected, owes a great deal to this approach.”

“The early results have been nothing short of fantastic. When I told my bank, HSBC in Weston-Super-Mare, what I was planning, I said that I expected turnover to increase in time by about 20%. We rocketed through that level in a couple of weeks, and are now more than 40% up overall. This is taking the entire period into account, including the very early days, so on a daily basis we’re actually well ahead of 40%.”

Another important factor in footwear4you’s success is the administrative support of Constance Davis, who Geoffrey appointed in February this year. “I already needed admin support just to run the shop, but we had to launch the web business as well in order to afford it,” he says. “She’s been wonderful – and, when you go on the website, her face is the first thing you see.”

And the virtual Constance is clearly encouraging people to buy. “Customers are coming to us from all over the place,” continues Geoffrey. “We expected business from, say, the north of Scotland, where there aren’t many shops. But we’re also supplying people in central London, for example, where you’d have thought they’d have all the choice in the world. And we have customers in Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Ireland – something quite new for a shop in Burnham!”

There are days when Geoffrey wonders what he’s unleashed. “Sometimes we feel we have a monster by the tail,” he says. “Just coping can be a challenge, but we’re determined to keep up our customer service levels whatever happens, with rapid fulfilment, free delivery and discounts for multiple orders. And we’re focused on continuing to provide our more local customers with the brands and service they’re used to from us.”

Says Kevin Redpath of Connecting Somerset, “What a fabulous job Geoffrey is doing of launching and managing an Internet business. So much credit is due to his sensible and energetic approach – thank goodness Gregory finally had his way and managed to persuade his dad to make the leap!”

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Note to Editor
Connecting Somerset is funded by Somerset County Council, the South West of England Regional Development Agency (SWRDA), Mendip, Sedgemoor, Taunton Deane and West Somerset Councils, South Somerset Together, the European Social Fund and Business Link Somerset.

Issued on behalf of Connecting Somerset by The Aurora Partnership