Uri Foox, president, Zoey Inc.

Uri Foox and his new e-commerce technology company, Zoey Inc., have come a long way in the past year.

Zoey has built a client base of about 500 companies, including more than 100 added in recent months, Foox says. Many of them are involved in wholesale as well as retail commerce. Among its clients involved in B2B e-commerce are Arlington Power Equipment Inc. (ArlingtonPower.com), a distributor of equipment and supplies used in landscaping in other outdoor operations; corporate gifts supplier 1-800-Bakery.com (corporate-gift.1-800-bakery.com); kitchen cabinets designer and distributor WoodCabinets4Less.com; and irrigation products supplier The Drip Store (DripIrrigation.com).

The strategy behind designing the Zoey e-commerce platform was to make directly usable by e-commerce practitioners—manufacturers, distributors and retailers, Foox says. “We built it for merchants, not developers,” he says. Among its basic features, for example, are an intuitive online dashboard for managing content, pre-integrated mobile apps and a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) web design editor.

Zoey’s mix of B2B and retail resulted a surge in gross merchandise value transacted over Zoey-hosted e-commerce sites, Foox says. For Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the Friday and Monday following Thanksgiving Day, total transactions on the Zoey platform increased 151% over the same days last year, he says.

Among the Zoey platform’s other features are:

• The ability to restrict access to products and categories for different customers;
• Tiered pricing for customers and groups of customers;
• Setting payment and shipping methods by customer group;
• Quick-order form;
• Multilanguage and multi-currency;
• Visual drag-and-drop design editor with specific text, allowing for personalized promotions by customer group.

In January, the Zoey platform will also include such features price quotes; net payment terms; multi-customer accounts; and matrix item ordering, which is designed to make it easier for customers to choose among various item attributes when placing orders.

Zoey provides its e-commerce technology platform under a SaaS or software-as-a-service model, under which clients subscribe to access the Zoey platform through a web browser. Its subscription fees as of Dec. 1 will range from $299 to $799 per month, depending on such criteria as a client’s number of products, the number of website features it uses and the level of technical support Zoey provides. The top level, for example, lets clients post up to 500,000 SKUs and set up an unlimited number of customer groups with their own product lists and prices. It also provides unlimited access to a software toolkit for building custom e-commerce software applications. Lower monthly prices are available under annual contracts.

Foox is the former owner of Pixafy, a digital commerce agency that builds e-commerce sites using technology from Magento, Shopify, WordPress and Drupal. More than a year ago, he was ready for a change, sold Pixafy, and launched Zoey Inc. to offer the Zoey-branded e-commerce platform to small and mid-sized companies.

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