ZCS Commercial Services Celebrate Million Dollar in Sales 10-13-16

Tribal Members

Tribal Members

Tribal Observer

ZCS Commercial Services Celebrate Million Dollar in Sales 10-13-16

Joseph V. Sowmick - October 14, 2016

Team Observer was on location October 13 to celebrate the ZCS Commercial Services e-Commerce business as they passed the one million sales mark for the fiscal year . ZCS Commercial Services Manager Chris Tata explains that most of the e-Commerce sales are generated from Amazon.

“In an ever changing retail marketplace, the Ziibiwing Commercial Services department has evolved by developing strategies that bring popular and competitively priced products to consumers. The ZCS department has built the e-commerce business by utilizing mostly existing resources to capture additional online sales,” Tata said. “We will continue to grow the e-commerce - 3rd party seller account on Amazon, under the name More Than Just Jewelry. With the necessary resources, we could easily see sales growth of four million dollars annually, over the next 3-4 years.”

Ziibiwing Commercial Services Assistant Manager Brenda Lehmkuhle provided an overview of their facility along with Tata and ZCS Commercial Services Web Store Administrator Pam Spurbeck.

“We want to thank Tribal Chief Frank Cloutier, Tribal Council Treasurer Gayle Ruhl, Tribal Administrator Tonia Leaureaux, ZCS Assistant Director Judy Pamp, Migizi CEO Robert Juckniess and SCIT Economic Developer Director Brian Smith for stopping by to recognize our staff and the amazing fact that we went over one million dollar in sales this past fiscal year,” Lehmkuhle said. “The staff that made this possible enjoyed the recognition and the cake, of course.”

Spurbeck informs Council gave the approval to build a larger warehouse next to their current location and the new facility will have taller ceilings and will allow them to expand their product selection. “More and more consumers are shopping and buying online. We recently upgraded all of our software that streamlined the process from order to delivery,” Spurbeck said. “We will be able to grow the business utilizing the newly implemented software allowing us to sell on more marketplaces and expand our online department.”

Fun facts provided by Spurbeck on the e-Commerce business include the following:

On peak days we ship out more than 750 packages
This year alone we have sold more than 8,800 Ty products, 3,800 Pendleton products, 2,400 hand warmer mugs.
We are one of the largest UPS shippers within the Department of Interior
Most of our customers are not from Michigan
We get most of our sales from California, New York, Texas, and Florida.
We ship about 70% of the merchandise we sell. 30% of our products are shipped to various Amazon warehouses to store and ship as it gets ordered.
We sell Native American made products on NativeDirect.com and more commercially made items on Amazon.

Tribal Chief Frank J. Cloutier continues to be amazed at how our Tribal e-Commerce business interests have grown and firmly believes the best is yet to come. “Just like any Fortune 500 company, we will continue to work at expanding our role in the marketplace. The Tribal Council remains driven on the expansion plans for our e-Commerce sales,” Cloutier said. “We will be working with Ziibiwing as they look to build more storage space for the growing market needs. With the great support we have from our e-Commerce employees, we will remain engaged with this market and it will be a part of creating a positive vision for the future of our Tribe.”

It’s never too early to get busy with some of that holiday shopping and you can start today by accessing the following Tribal e-Commerce links: Nativedirect.com http://nativedirect.com/

and More Than Just Jewelry https://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&me=A215FREEOFLE7G&page=1.