Tentworld

Alex still runs the show today, as Managing Director. His wife Barbara is Financial Controller and their son Jon is the General Manager. In 2003, Jon decided a web store was the next step for Tentworld and, with a friend’s help, he built and launched one of Australia’s first online camping stores. The site started small—with just 50 products, but as the business grew, the team found they were far too busy to focus on web development and their in-house platform began to lag.

Saving time on website maintenance

The problem, as Jon discovered, was that the team were not only running Tentworld, they were also now struggling to run their ever expanding web store. Their developer was frantically busy with day-to-day site issues and had a long wait list of to-dos that could take up to 12 months to tick off, which is far from ideal when you need to run promotions or make site changes in time for summer. For these not-so-happy campers, it was time to reassess.

The guys decided that a responsive website template that worked across desktop, mobile and tablet devices was what Tentworld needed to forge ahead. So in August 2015 they took advantage of Neto’s in-house design services and migration guidance to get started.

We had an existing site, so it was a bit of work to shift everything across, but we didn’t encounter any problems and the team at Neto were really helpful.

But it was Neto’s ‘future focus’ that really sealed the deal, because now Jon and his team don’t have to think about their website anymore. “The Neto team is driven towards innovation and ongoing development. That’s critical because now we can be confident our website is current – without having to do any maintenance, backups and updates ourselves,” says Jon.

More ways to get found online

There’s little point in having a web store if your customers can’t find you, so Neto’s platform is optimised for search engines to ensure products can be easily found online. That’s helpful when you stock as many products as Tentworld. “We pride ourselves on our extensive range; we have over 100 top brands of camping gear and over 5,000 products but we don’t have time to think about SEO,” explains Jon.

And with Neto they can increase their online revenue using eBay – without actually having to focus on eBay. “When you load a product to the site it is mirrored on eBay. That’s really great because it takes that additional workload away from us. Now we can sell on eBay without having to think about it,” explains Jon.

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In addition, Neto’s payment options means Tentworld have increased their cart size and can offer their customers more ways to pay. “We sell a lot of large and costly investment items like tents, so it’s helpful to offer customers the flexibility to use zipPay or zipMoney to buy now and pay later.”

Expanding and growing the business

With Jon free from spending countless hours managing the website’s development, he’s had more time to focus on growing the business. As a result, Tentworld has gone from strength to strength. Since making the shift to Neto, he’s grown their brick and mortar footprint from 7 stores to ten.

And he’s found the website helps to promote those stores. “A lot of our customers do their research online and then come into the store to make the purchase. In this regard the website has been a great promotional tool for the business. And it gives us the ability to easily run promotions online and match them in the stores.”

In just two years of being with Neto the numbers speak for themselves.

“Our online business has grown 191% and our overall business, including shop revenue, has doubled,” Jon says. That’s plenty to be happy about but it’s not the only thing. Jon’s also glad that he’s no longer stuck being a web developer and can find the time to go camping a couple of times a year.

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