Open Source Saves CEOs Credibility

59 year old company finds a free open source commerce solution that provides everything their customers demand while reducing overall ownership costs.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Huntsville, AL (PRWEB) November 21, 2003
The first month online for us was a failure" according to Bill Peer, President and CEO of Los Tomases Candle Makers LLC. Users said they didnt understand what to do and couldnt find our products", he continues. This was particularly frustrating for Peer since going online was the first major initiative undertaken by the new owner. The excitement around launching the web site was enormous because direct to consumer sales was new to our company, but the site failed miserably and my creditability was damaged." Peer found a remedy, however, in a free open source project known as osCommerce.

The 59 year old scented candle making company set out to replace the off the shelf solution purchased just a month before. We pulled out the key feature list we used in our last selection round, but then added the requirement that we had to have infinite flexibility, and that meant access to the source code", Peer says. Scouring Internet resources, the company reviewed a lot of offerings. We eventually found osCommerce and fell in love." osCommerce (www.oscommerce.com), an open source GNU licensed commerce solution based on PHP and mySQL, has been around since March of 2000.

Seven days after selecting osCommerce, the new site was launched. Not only has our site performance indicators improved, but our conversion rate has tripled!" Peer exclaims. The votive manufacturers bottom line has also been positively impacted because of the reduced maintenance costs. Having access to the source code is awesome because if there is a problem you can trace it ... and if you need to change functionality to meet your customers needs, you can do that too." Peer notes, however, it is the access to the osCommerce community that is the real money saver, if you bump your nose into a problem you can bet that someone else has too and that they have posted their solutions."

Los Tomases Candle Makers has taken advantage of a free, open source solution to improve their online channel. The result is a reduction in operating costs and an improvement in conversion rate. If you want to improve your bottom line like we did at www.OnlyVotives.com, you must seriously consider an open source solution like osCommerce".

About Los Tomases Candle Makers LLC
Known as the source for hard to find quality votives, Los Tomases Candle Makers LLC offers fifty different flavors of the finest scented votive candles. The company maintains its reputation for consistently producing the finest votives by using the same machines and processes since 1944. With its new online presence, Los Tomases Candle Makers offers free shipping within the continental United States. http://www.OnlyVotives.com