Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM SEPTEMBER 2021 56 O ui, oui! AVB Marketing, the advertising and e-commerce arm of the BrandSource buying group, along with its north-of-the-border affiliate Mega Group, recently teamed up to create a bilingual web solution to serve French-speaking retailers in Canada. Michael Borecky, senior director of digital services for Mega Group and its BrandSource Canada members, worked in conjunction with the AVB Marketing team stateside to migrate AVB's LINQ online merchandising portal to the over 100 websites up north that employ AVB's proprietary Alta e-commerce platform. Developed in-house, LINQ populates AVB's Alta 360 websites with product and presents it in the most saleable and customer-engaging way. With LINQ, members can: • Sort their merchandise by popularity, rather than alphabetically • Showcase promotions • Create special catalogs for scratch-and-dent and other clearance models • Flag products that are in-stock, on sale or offer special features • Set rules to price-scrape competitors' products and meet or beat their retails • Make custom product packages that take advantage of their overstock and vendor deals BrandSource members have lauded LINQ, which has become an essential tool for e-tail and no doubt contributed to the group's better than 800 percent increase in online transactions last year. But both the LINQ and Alta systems had to be completely transformed to support the French-speaking customers of AVB's BrandSource Canada partners. For LINQ, the data was reworked in two separate ways to support the translation from English to French. Products were localized, meaning the LINQ platform stores both English and French versions of Canadian products. This is critical to the functionality of the new system because product variants, which may differ by content, can each be edited separately. Having such dynamic SKUs, explained Laura Dake, AVB Marketing's senior product manager for LINQ, allows customers to make customized selections and see the updated price and inventory status instantly. The data for all other details, such as page titles, columns and buttons, is translated, she noted. For French Canadian dealers there's now a toggle in the upper-right corner of the LINQ interface that allows them to switch back and forth easily between the two languages. Not only can users quickly select their tongue of choice, but they can move between languages on the product page to see how the item displays. On the consumer side, AVB's transactional Alta web platform has a similar bilingual experience, but geared toward consumers surfing the dealers' catalog pages. Member dealers can choose a primary language for their site that users will see when they land on it. However, a dropdown menu at the top of the page allows customers to easily change to their preferred language for shopping, Borecky noted. Mega Group is pleased overall with how the project turned out. "Our members are excited and very pleased with the functionality of the website platform and its ability to connect with French-speaking consumers," Borecky said. "It is a competitive advantage for retailers and Mega Group in the French-speaking parts of the country." Mega Group experienced a few hiccups in the implementation of the software, but acknowledged that it was to be expected in a project of this magnitude. "This is a significant plus for all of our retailers, for sure," Borecky added. "We have talented and dedicated teams in place on both sides of the border that have coalesced to bring together two cultures. It's a great win." LINQ MAKES THE FRENCH CONNECTION Andy Kriege Member Service Trends Andy Kriege is General Manager of Communications for AVB/BrandSource, the nation's leading merchandising and marketing co-op for independent appliance, home furnishings and consumer tech dealers. RO Working in tandem with its Canadian partner Mega Group, AVB Marketing developed a bilingual version of its proprietary LINQ merchandising platform and Alta 360 e-commerce solution to support Mega's French-speaking members.

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