Ken Cranes: An Old-Fashioned Web Success Story

In an era of animated applets and highly sophisticated content, one of the most successful websites looks like a throwback to the early days of Mosaic. Ken Cranes Laser Disc Super Store (www.kencranes.com) is a crowded, text-heavy site that takes forever to load. There are no links to other sites. Virtually the only graphics are the covers of the movies for sale.

So why has Ken Cranes become the leader in on-line videodisc sales, with over $4 million in revenues in 1996 (and presumably far more than that when 1997 results are tallied)? The secret is a stratospheric level of customer service, which translates into even more stellar word-of-mouth.

Cranes on-line customer service and value commitment is simple: every available title in stock, at 20% discount off retail, with most orders shipped the same day at no charge for 2nd day delivery in the continental U.S. (There is a $1.50 shipping charge per order.) You can put your name on an email list, and get notified as soon as your favorite movie is available on disc.

ZD Internet Magazine monitored the alt.video.laserdisc Usenet group over a 90-day period and recorded more than 60 posts from participants recommending Ken Cranes as the place to buy discs. Although the company is best known at the retail level in Southern California where it has
stores, most of the respondents were from the East Coast.

According to Martin Greenwald, one of Ken Cranes suppliers, "when you buy one disc online from Ken Crane, he doesnt make any money on that order, primarily because he offers two-day shipping for free. But he knows once you buy, youll come back again and again. Hes like Walmart. He makes money through traffic, not costs."

Ken Cranes success story has a happy moral. Too many businesses, when they move to the Web, treat Web customers as second-class citizens and expect them to share their growing pains. While theyll gladly take an order on the phone, for example, Web customers have to print out a worksheet and send it in. Instead of getting immediate help from a real person (or the Web equivalent, an interactive query process), Web customers must send email and wait for a reply.

Ken Cranes shows us another marketing model, and we think its the one that will prevail. Instead of using the Web as an excuse to reduce expectations, Ken Cranes raises them by employing this instant medium as an opportunity for even better customer service.

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