Customer: Niche Retail
Secure-24 Solution: Critical Applications Hosting
Industry- ecommerce retailer
Headquarters: Sylvan Lake, Michigan with offices in Ann Arbor, MI and Minneapolis, MN
Revenue: $19M 2007, projected $22M 2008
Employees: 52
Website: www.nicheretail.com
Overview:
Niche Retail, an innovative ecommerce retailer, was using a traditional hosting company. Like typical hosting environments, Niche got a “black box: environment with no consultation and virtually no support. They chose from a menu. The environment was designed to accommodate where Niche was at the time. The hosting company was not proactive in anticipating or asking what Niche Retail might need next. But while they were not asking, Niche was innovating and growing, and beginning to realize that they needed more.
Business Need:
Niche Retail is unlike other companies whose website may function solely as an online storefront. They market the product line, facilitate the transaction with their own customer service staff, instantly verify the payment method to eliminate fraud, and then distribute the product from their warehouse directly to the customer- typically within the same day.
To accomplish this Niche Retail knew that their hosting environment needed to be: highly available, scalable and 100% secure - all the time. But there was a lag time between identifying changes needed in the critical applications and getting the hosting company to respond.
Solution:
Niche Retail migrated their 20+ websites to a Secure-24 hosting environment. Secure 24’s environment allows Niche Retail to fully control application development critical to the growth of their business. Secure 24 also suggested and integrated new solutions that were needed by the company, both in the present and in the future as they grew.
Benefits:
The new relationship with Secure-24 has developed into a real partnership. Niche has the confidence that their sites are hosted in a secure and efficient manner, and they have expert technical resources in Secure-24 from whom they draw for consultations as they grow.
