One company store to rule them all.

Online Company Stores for Employees

Employees and team members often need to order swag, apparel, uniforms and other merchandise from the company they work for, and custom logo items are an important way of presenting a company’s brand to the public. An online company store handles order fulfillment for these employees, allowing them to get their gear from a fulfillment warehouse or even on-demand customizations like specific logos for certain locations or name drops for each employee.

Employees may also be able to pay with a number of different payment methods, and often the merch or incentive products in an online company store are free to the employee. How do you limit what an employee can order from a web store? A bunch of ways, it turns out.

What Types of Payment Methods are in a Company Store?

We’re all accustomed to paying for online purchases with credit cards, but company store often offers additional methods of payment. Many of these methods are designed to make the process of employee purchase easier, while others are designed for controlling exactly how much a user or group of users can spend.

Points and Rewards

Points company stores often use some kind of digital currency – “points”, “bucks” or something similar that are rewarded to employees or team members. These rewards often come with certain accomplishments, like a good safety record or excellent sales performance. These points can be used for anything in the store, and their value doesn’t need to have any relationship to actual dollar values; as the promotional products distributor, you’ll work with your corporate client to set the value of these items as you see fit.

Budgets

Employees may not just be buying merchandise to wear and use; they may also need fulfillment of giveaways for trade shows, or leaflets/sell sheets for a new real estate listing. storeBlox CS online web stores have budget options to suit every need, including individual budgets, group or department shared budgets, and supervisor approval of orders.

Coupons, Discounts, Gift Cards and Redemption Codes

Like any other online e-commerce store, a company store supports coupons (including coupons that are only applicable to specific items); discounts (percentage or dollar value); and gift cards (also known as stored value cards). Advanced company stores like storeBlox also support a flexible redemption system that allows for the redemption of certain items or groups of items using a one-time code.

How Do You Handle Tax and Shipping in a Company Store?

Company stores are very similar to retail e-commerce in their support for multiple shipping carriers (through FedEx, UPS, USPS or through third-party shipping tools like ShipStation) and accurate sales tax calculation. Where company stores differ is in their support for custom shipping methods. For instance, some companies have one or more internal locations where employees can pick up items they’ve ordered without incurring any shipping charges. Custom payment methods enable the ultimate flexibility in freight and shipment for employee company stores.

What is a Pop-up or Flash Company Store?

Many online company stores only run for a short time; often called “pop-up” or “flash” shops, these stores often have seasonal items, special promotions (sometimes to sell off discontinued merchandise) or a holiday program with employee gift redemption at the end of the year. Popup shops usually have only a few items and only last for a month or two, but they can be very high-volume, especially if it is an employee redemption program for a large company, which can often result in thousands of orders in just a few minutes.

Many employee popup or flash stores are redemption stores, which means that the employee is given a one-time redemption code to get one or more gift or incentive items from the shop. For these programs, a platform like storeBlox XPress can make the process fast and pain-free by removing many of the standard shopping cart and checkout features.

Do Your Company Stores Charge Transaction Fees?

Some company store providers charge a very small fee to setup a company store but take a cut of every transaction. While this can mean lower costs for very low-volume company stores, once your company promo store starts doing a substantial number of orders, transaction fee-based stores actually become more expensive than a store with a regular monthly hosting fee. You’re probably already paying 2-3% for every credit card transaction; why should your company store provider take even more of that?eBlox has never charged transaction fees and never will. You shouldn’t be penalized for your success.