e-Tailer Works with PICS to Complete Weight and Zone Based Shipping

As president and owner of Ultra-RC, a bustling company dedicated to manufacturing and selling radio-controlled aircraft, Jim Eble’s time is extremely limited. And he must play a very active, hands-on role at work.

Ultra-RC is an Internet/Web-based business with only a few employees. It prides itself on maintaining an excellent reputation for providing individualized, attentive, one-stop customer service. As such, Eble doesn’t have much time to devote to peripheral projects. “I have to enlist outside professionals to help with certain things that would take my time away from my business,” Eble says. And that is why he called the PICS Internet Division.

Eble started working with PICS well before he made the transition from a bricks to clicks company, but the relationship intensified when he asked them to help him charter a Web presence. “We started with a simple Web site which quickly changed to a large e-commerce site,” he says. Within a year, the “simple” site featured more than 10,000 products. “We’ve had almost no downtime,” he says. “PICS products and services are always state of the art. We’ve gone through several enhancements
and updates, and implementation has always been easy.”

As Ultra-RC grows, Eble continues to team with PICS and is currently implementing a weight and zone-based shipping module to accommodate a new hobby accessory product line. Currently most of Ultra-RC’s products are very large and are shipped individually. Products in its new hobby accessory line, however, are small and can be shipped together—fueling the need for change. “If I were buying from Ultra-RC, I wouldn’t be happy paying flat shipping fees for individual items in a multiple item purchase,” Eble says.

The new zone-based shipping module will calculate shipping fees associated with individual customer orders based on the weight and size of each individual item. “This will greatly reduce the amount of shipping fees billed to the customer and provide an accurate single rate base on the billable shipping costs,” Eble says, improving service and saving his customers money—which will greatly improve satisfaction.

“PICS has been an excellent value to Ultra-RC,” Eble says. “They have been available when I need them, evenings, weekends—and even a holiday. I always feel good starting new projects with PICS because it allows me to focus on what’s most important: my business.”