NHL Auction Action
“We are not only your eCommerce vendor - we are your online partner”. Comments like this are often met with a degree of skepticism, particularly at the early stages of a client engagement. However, it is possible for the vendors-client relationship to facilitate a truly trusted partnership that helps clients grow and expand their online business. Since 2001, Truition has hosted and managed the NHL Auction Network (http://auctions.nhl.com), the leading source online for hockey memorabilia and collectibles. Products such as game-worn jerseys and trading cards are provided directly by the NHL, its member teams, and selected vendors. Since its inaugural season, the site has grown 10 times as a result of the hard work of the many people who have developed and marketed the site.
Parties from both the NHL and Truition collaborate to ensure that hockey fans visiting the auction site receive the best products and services in the world. What does that mean? It means ensuring teams and rare team-specific items get up on the site in a timely manner, and it also means ensuring high-quality authentic items from the best players in the game are evenly and well represented in the marketplace. It means providing a scalable, reliable platform and services for the NHL to market and advertise their auction program. It also means meeting end users and fans to make sure that all of their needs are being responded to.
Last weekend, the NHL and Truition partnered to co-sponsor an NHL Auction booth at the Sports Card and Memorabilia Expo held at the International Centre in Toronto, where they showcased the site to the thousands of hockey fans attending the show.
Truition staff familiar working on the online auction program (thanks to Carly Napier, Gary Tsaconas and Vinai Dhanrai) along with members from the NHL eCommerce Program (thanks to Joslin Warren and Jordan Morse) manned the booth all three days. Hockey fans were able to visit the booth and bid on items, giving us a chance to speak directly to the fans and receive their feedback. It was a great event with hundreds of vendors selling their memorabilia and hockey cards. Autograph sessions were taking place right near our booth with hockey stars Felix Potvin, Curtis Joseph, Johnny Bower, Claude Lemieux, and many others.
The show was very successful; so much so that we plan to run it again at the NHL Fan Fest at the 2008 NHL All Star game in Atlanta scheduled for January 26/27, 2008.
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