In August 2010, Genesco Inc. bought Keuka Footwear Inc. and made a lot of changes in how the manufacturer of slip-resistant footwear operates, including changing its name to SureGrip Footwear and relocating the company headquarters to Nashville, Tenn. from Keuka Park, NY. Other changes led to big gains in the company’s online sales to business customers, and that’s prompting the company to step up its online marketing investments

Laura Van Sickle, e-commerce director, credits some of the online growth to SureGrip replacing its homegrown e-commerce site with one based on Magento Enterprise technology from Magento Inc.

Since launching the new, mobile-friendly site in July 2014, SureGrip Footwear has kicked up online sales to 50% of the company’s total revenue, Van Sickle said in an interview recently at Magento Inc.’s Imagine conference in Las Vegas. Previously, a “small percentage” of the company’s sales were processed online, she says. 80% of the company’s business-to-business sales are now processed online at SuregripFootwear.com, which receives about 20,000 monthly unique visitors. Van Sickle declines to disclose sales or financial information, but says the company plans to grow total revenue about 10% this year.

Suregrip serves some 20,000 business customers operating in industries like hospitality, health care and food service. Business customers account for 90% of sales and consumers 10%.

Helping to drive growth is the company’s ability to offer slip-resistant footwear in something other than what Van Sickle calls “lunch lady shoes,” or plain black clogs, on branded sites specific to customers like Whole Foods Market, she said during an Imagine conference presentation. The manufacturer of slip-resistant shoes works with such brands as Crocs, New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. and Aerosoles, and adds slip-resistant soles to those brands’ existing shoe styles. “Employees would rather wear something stylish and comfortable in brands they already know and love,” Van Sickle says.

Businesses that want their employees to wear slip-resistant shoes can place group or individual orders for branded shoes online from the SureGrip site.

Once a Whole Foods manager logs in to SuregripFootwear.com, for example, she can place a group order for multiple shoes, choose among customized credit and payment terms and ship products to multiple stores or the homes of employees. Employees can also browse the site for shoes they like on mobile or tablet devices.

The new Magento site was built with responsive design, which adapts the layout of an e-commerce site to the size of a shopper’s screen, including smartphones and tablets as well as PCs. visitors arriving to SuregripFootwear.com from mobile or tablet devices has grown to 30% of the site’s monthly traffic, up from virtually none before the relaunch, Van Sickle says. The site’s mobile conversion rate of visitors who eventually buy has also grown to 6%, again up from a small percentage before, she says. SuregripFootwear.com’s bounce rate has also decreased to 30%, down from 50% before the relaunch.

The nature of the business makes it imperative that SureGrip can display its products effectively to visitors viewing the site on a mobile phone, Van Sickle says. “A lot of employees are young millennials who are used to just doing everything on their phone. They shop and look at what they want on their phone, and then give the order to the manager who places it on her desktop,” she says.

This year, the manufacturer will focus on using Pardot by Salesforce, an online marketing tool that will allow SureGrip to more easily understand and market to customers based on their industry and interests, Van Sickle says. The software will draw on customer order history and related data maintained in Suregrip’s Internet-based customer relationship management system from Salesforce.com Inc. “We’d like to decrease the time it takes to find customers and to onboard them,” Van Sickle says. “Some accounts it can take six to 12 months to onboard because they’re just big, bureaucratic companies.”

SureGrip also hopes to launch a Spanish-language version of its site by the end of the year. “We have a lot of accounts with a Hispanic population that works for them, so having a Spanish site is key,” Van Sickle says. “The beauty of Magento is the marketplace that has all the extensions and partners available. We’ll probably work with one to launch the Spanish site.” Hundreds of companies develop add-ons for Magento, according to Magento Connect, the technology provider’s marketplace.

DSS Partners, a web development firm, built the site. The annual fee for Magento Enterprise software starts at about $18,000.

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