China Collectors Buy Rare Treasures On-line at blueandwhite.com

Collectors of vintage blue and white china in America, the UK and throughout Europe have discovered a wonderful source for collectibles at www.blueandwhite.com, the e-commerce website of Lovers of Blue and White operating out of converted stables near Royston, Hertfordshire.

Back in 1996, Andrew Pye and his partner started a mail order business to serve as a reputable clearinghouse for antique blue and white china from the early 1700’s through modern day. People from all around the UK called to see if Blue and White could find pieces to fill in missing pieces to collections. When the company was discovered by an American furnishings magazine, inquiries started coming in from America. And soon, the company was regularly sending out catalogs of current inventory to a list of 12,000 interested collectors on both sides of the ocean and across the channel.

“We had an idea the Internet could help our business,” Pye said. “But we weren’t exactly sure how. The original idea was to put our catalog on the Web and save some printing expense. But then we thought we could take it one step further and put existing inventory on the Web and actually show what’s available as opposed to many sites that just put up pictures and tease people into calling. It all seemed very complex.

“Then I got a call from the people at McLintock, an e-commerce website development company. After a few minutes of conversation, they assured me they could do what we wanted and much more. It turned out they were good to their word.

“The first conversation resulted in a business brief with a set of must-have features on the website. McLintock people are very good marketers as well as Web technicians, which gives them good insight into what the site needs to do. As we got into the project, the developers caused us to think quite a bit about how we wanted things to work. It was a good give-and-take and, even when things seemed very complicated, they would go away and think about it and come back about a half an hour later with a solution.

“The site is hosted on McLintock secure servers. And functionally, I think it is quite clever. Every page loads quickly, including those with photos. If you have a pattern with 65 pieces, it shows you all of them. It is intelligent enough to know if you ask for a pattern for ‘Dalton’ when the manufacturer’s name is ‘Doulton’, it sends you to the right place. In fact, the site currently understands 23 spellings for ‘Doulton.’ So you don’t have to spell well to still get to what you want to see. It’s the same way in patterns. People speak of Willow patterns, but there are lots of them. So, if you put in ‘Willow’ for a pattern, you’ll get a look at 15 of them or however many we have. We don’t have our entire inventory of 7,000 items on the site yet, but we’re getting there. The thing that slows us down is people keep buying this stuff!

“Thanks to mentions by magazines such as Country Home Magazine, the Website has brought us new customers from America and throughout Europe, but it has also affected our more localized customers. A man who hadn’t bought anything for three years came into the showroom the other day and spent £300 because he saw a piece on the website.”

www.blueandwhite.com was unusual in that the site went live at midnight on August 6, 2000 and received its first order one hour later. Many e-commerce sites wait months for their first order. And the sales have not stopped. The business receives on average of one or two orders every day from its website.

“We have lots of plans to expand the site,” Pye said. We recently added an on-line newsletter where we can update it as necessary and add “specials” whenever they become available. McLintock handles all registration with search engines and regular monitoring of site traffic. They have been very easy to work with and they will be important to the growth of our e-commerce business. If a problem comes up, they just solve it. They’re very action orientated. You can call them, have a business conversation, everyone’s pleasant and it gets done.

“The end result is we have customers who are very happy with the pieces they receive and the service we are able to provide. We have always prided ourselves on bringing a high level of integrity to the business. People write to us saying that they buy from us because they trust us. I believe the site reflects our sense of personal attention.”

Lovers of Blue and White are at www.blueandwhite.com

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