Vitamin Research Products puts hybris and Portaltech at the heart of its global e-commerce strategy

New York – May 17, 2010. Vitamin Research Products (VRP), a leading U.S.-based manufacturer and marketer of pharmaceutical-quality nutritional supplements, has selected a best-of-breed commerce solution from hybris, a leading multichannel commerce and communication software vendor, and its strategic partner Portaltech, an e-commerce systems integrator and consultancy. QuickLive, the new quick-to-deploy version of the hybris e-commerce platform, which was developed by Portaltech and incorporates enhanced e-commerce functionality to speed up the implementation process, is expected to help VRP triple online sales over the next 18 months.

VRP currently offers over 350 nutritional products to its 120,000 online customers every month. Key to the selection of hybris and Portaltech was the company’s plan to increase its product line and enhance website content and its multichannel sales model which required a highly scalable platform capable of providing the functionality, performance and advanced user experience that healthcare professionals and direct customers now expect. As a global business, VRP was also keen to offer a multilingual, multi-currency e-commerce website for its customers and to integrate its ERP system, Jeeves, with the chosen platform.

VRP’s Director of e-Commerce, Brian Rand explained that: “Our existing .net website was not able to respond to the ever changing needs and the exponential growth of our e-commerce business. We needed to invest in a new platform that would guarantee the performance and scalability that we need today but designed with future growth in mind.”

“Having made a lengthy and thorough evaluation of the products available on the market, we decided to use hybris and its partner Portaltech for this project. Both companies have a proven track record in all of these areas but will also enable us to take advantage of the latest merchandising and behavior-based marketing capabilities that will help us to attract and retain customers, using personalized cross-selling and up-selling techniques to enhance the multichannel shopping experience and increase sales at the same time,” he added.

The new platform, which is expected to go live in the summer of 2010, will enable VRP to:
- Enable customers to search for products via health conditions
- Allow customers to create wishlists of products and to share information on Facebook and Twitter
- Provide a superior user experience and faster navigation through categories
- Enable VRP to deliver enhanced promotional merchandising
- Develop a scalable and extendable platform that is robust and long term
- Significantly reduce bounce rates by providing a more interactive user experience

Commenting on the announcement, Carsten Thoma, COO hybris Group and president hybris U.S., said: “VRP is one of the leading Neutraceutical manufacturing and marketing companies in the U.S.  Our selection is evidence of the market leading strengths of our solutions in what is one of the world’s most competitive and toughest markets.  We look forward to working with VRP to expand its global business and online sales.”

Andrew Walker, CEO of Portaltech, commented: “At the heart of VRP’s ambitious growth plans is the desire to offer a sophisticated and highly personalized service to both its business users and direct consumers. We look forward to sharing our expertise in the development and implementation of future proof e-commerce solutions with other businesses in North America going forward.”