CASE STUDY
Fans, Festivals, FileMaker: E-Commerce Gets a Little Help From Its Friends

When Mark Lapidos, president and originator of The Fest, decided 34 years ago to feed his passion for The Beatles with an annual Beatles Fans Celebration, the furthest things from his mind were computers and databases. Any thoughts about managing a repeat event and bringing The Fest to numerous cities around the country just did not hang around.

However, The Fest grew into an annual event held in multiple U.S. cities to bring Beatles fans together. His Beatles passion turned into a full-time business for him. As business grew, his wife pitched in, and he eventually hired a full-time employee. During busier seasons, he adds one or two part-time workers.

With the gradual increase in customers and events in the mid 1980s, Lapidos eventually experimented with a Web site to spread the word about his events and memorabilia for sale. Years later, that led to a transition into a full-fledged e-commerce site.

"I got curious once I learned about desktop publishing and computers. I started using Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) computers and FileMaker in 1985 for data entry and stayed with both to this day," Lapidos told MacNewsWorld. "Back then, you didn't have many choices. Plus, I believe in product loyalty when what I use works."

Varied Inventory

The Fest sells all things related to Beatle-mania. The inventory list includes CDs/DVDs of Beatles music, posters, books, clothing and special gifts.

This year, the company is offering a special holiday catalog and a one-of-its-kind board game called "The Beatles Monopoly Game."

Besides the latest in Beatles wear, customers can buy stationery, watches, clocks and puzzles, games and toys -- all uniquely branded Beatles.

Oh yes, you can also buy Fest Tickets 2009.

The Problem

Lapidos' business grew up on FileMaker, so he never found any reason or need to experiment with other database products, he said. Generally, he was able to set up all of his record-keeping generally out of the box.

As business grew, Lapidos worked his way through new generations of FileMaker for the Mac. However, when he expanded his operation to a fully functional Web site for e-tail, keeping track of storefront sales at his Westwood, NJ location and his contracted inventory services warehoused in nearby Hackensack posed challenges that went beyond his ability to manually enter data in FileMaker.

His mailing list alone numbered more than 156,000 customers. He ran one Mac server and five desktop Macs. In addition, his database had to interface with a server in the warehouse.

"We started out doing all order fulfillment by hand from the office. We took orders over the phone and punched in credit card details manually. Then our new Web site started generating 70 percent of all our orders," Lapidos explained.

The Solution

What The Fest needed was the ability to automate as much of the business process as possible. That meant being able to use the database to track inventory, manage records, process online sales, coordinate shipping and send out mailing list notices.

"I can go to our FileMaker file, take information about a customer , and push a button [on the keyboard] so it goes to shipping. Our setup with FileMaker handles all of these tasks well," noted Lapidos.

He still has to enter manually checks customers mail to him. But sales from the Web site go directly into the FileMaker database, which also sends the customer an order received notification.

"FileMaker is programmed and formulated for my unique requirements. For example, we needed a special customization for our current holiday project. It was very complicated," he said.

How It Works

Lapidos has become very apt at using FileMaker to run The Fest. However, for the high-end customization and its integration with a companion e-commerce package, The Fest's owner has relied on the tech support of Paradise Partners, a New York City firm that creates FileMaker Pro systems.

"Mark is very keyed into how FileMaker works. He needs my help for the advanced features," Ken d'Oronzio, founder of Paradise Partners, told MacNewsWorld. His big push this year was getting the new Web site set up with customer interaction. We had to get everything integrated," he explained.

Lapidos is using the latest version of FileMaker 9 with ESS features or External SQL Data Sources (ESS), said d'Oronzio.

Previous versions of FileMaker Pro had the ability to share data with various external data sources and clients. Now FileMaker Pro 9 lets Lapidos import records from an ODBC (Open Database Connectivity)-based data source and run SQL commands, d'Oronzio explained.

E-Commerce Add-on

D'Oronzio added a package called "Zen Cart" to feed FileMaker data into the e-commerce features The Fest needed to modernize its Web site. Zen Cart is open source shopping cart software.

This solution integrated the separate systems [that fed into FileMaker] to keep inventory current and to manage orders the same way, whether they were from the Web site, phone, surface mail or a Fest convention, d'Oronzio explained.

"It's really a very impressive setup. The ESS features look like another database source. Mark can scroll through his entire contents. We added automated shipping with label printing and calculation costs and the ability to post notices to customers," said d'Oronzio.