CASE STUDY · WEBSITE & ONLINE SALES
Coyote Company Leather
Taking an established business somewhere it couldn’t go before.
Visit Coyote Company Leather
01
WHY THEY CAME TO US
Coyote Company Leather needed a way to sell online.
We first met Don Otey, owner of Coyote Company Leather, at a trade show more than a decade ago.
Don had built his business the traditional way: making quality leather goods, taking them directly to customers at shows and events, and building a reputation over years of doing the work.
His ordering system was traditional too. Customers could choose products from a printed catalog and mail in a handwritten order form.
It worked. It had worked for years.
But Don was beginning to wonder whether there might be another way.
02
WHAT WE LEARNED
The business wasn’t new. The way customers bought was changing.
Coyote Company Leather already had the things a new business spends years trying to establish: products people wanted, an experienced craftsman behind them, repeat customers and a reputation built through personal relationships.
What it didn’t have was an easy way for customers to find, explore and order those products when Don wasn’t standing in front of them at a trade show.
The opportunity wasn’t to change the business Don had built.
It was to give that business another way to reach its customers
03
WHAT WE SAW
The opportunity was bigger than simply putting products online.
An online store could become a second sales channel alongside the trade shows.
Customers could see the products instead of reading their names from a list. They could learn about different options, choose what they needed, place an order and pay without mailing paperwork back and forth.
And unlike a trade-show booth, the store didn’t have to be packed up when the show ended.
04
WHAT MADE SENSE
More wasn’t the goal. The right amount was.
Don didn’t need technology for technology’s sake. He needed a practical way to make the products he had spent decades creating available to people beyond the places he could physically take them.
So we took a sales process that already worked and adapted it for the web.
The goal wasn’t to replace the relationships or craftsmanship that built Coyote Company Leather.
It was to let the technology carry some of the load.
05
WHAT WE BUILT
We built an online store around the business Don had already built.
We built Coyote Company Leather an online store where customers could see the products, understand their options and place orders directly.
Over time, the website became more than an additional way to order. It gave Don a sales channel that didn’t depend on packing inventory, traveling to an event, setting up a booth and being physically present to make the sale.
06
WHAT CHANGED
Coyote Company Leather could now sell beyond the places Don could personally be.
For years, the website and trade shows worked alongside each other.
Eventually, traveling and setting up for shows became more work than Don wanted to take on. By then, Coyote Company Leather already had another way to reach its customers.
Don could step away from the road without requiring the business to step away from its customers.