The company has taken its extreme sports to a digital level with a new iPhone catalog app.
Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), a sports and outdoor equipment retailer that is already recognized for its online innovations, is now stepping up its mcommerce strategy with a new iPhone app that allows users to browse through its product catalog.
The company has released this app in time for the holiday shopping season for Apple smartphone users.
The mcommerce app, which now allows the company’s customers to shop from their iPhones, was created by Xtreme Labs, a company based in Toronto, Canada. The application will allow consumers who typically shop in the stores to make their purchases, as well as those who don’t have a brick and mortar shop located nearby.
The mcommerce app will provide a full range of different items, displayed within their digital catalog.
The company has already been shipping backpacks, kayaks, headlamps to its customers from their website since 2000. Now, the concept is mcommerce optimized to allow the app to function as a mobile friendly store. According to MEC, updates are consistently provided in order to ensure that the products are always up to date.
The online experience from the store has been highly applauded. In fact, it even won the Canada Post 2012 “Best Multi-Channel Retailer of the Year – Large” award. The product development and engineering for the app was handed over to Xtreme Labs to ensure that it would provide the type of experience for which MEC has become known.
The Apple iPhone app has now been launched, and was chosen as the first option for a number of reasons, said the Xtreme Labs director of business development for retail, Jeremy Black. He stated that when the analytics for the standard site were examined, it was clear that the primary mobile users who were accessing it were based on the iOS platform, far more than Android or Blackberry. This operating system was, therefore, given top priority over all others.
iOS was also chosen for the initial launch of the mcommerce app, though, because users of those devices have shown to be far more willing to make their purchases using their devices.