SportStation.com, a retailer of sports collectibles, has increased by 15% sales processed through Amazon.com and several other online marketplaces with a web-based system from Mercent for controlling product data across multiple web sites, COO Matt Bowen tells InternetRetailer.com.

SportStation, the online selling arm of JR’s Sports Collectibles Inc., Anaheim, CA, specializes in selling licensed sports collectibles. When a big sporting event occurs like the Boston Red Sox’ victory in the World Series last fall, it can lead to surges in online orders resulting in out-of-stock situations at several web sites. “So our Red Sox jerseys won’t show up in portals,” Bowen says.

Surges in orders also hit at the beginning of the holiday shopping season, when average daily shipments climb from 200 to 1,200 packages.

But when products that appear in shopping portals can’t be fulfilled, it results in a major customer service problem in addition to lost sales, Bowen says. So last October, just after the close of the World Series, SportStation deployed a web-based Mercent Commerce System, which automatically updates the third-party marketplaces with product data from SportStation’s NetSuite e-commerce platform.

Before implementing the Mercent system, SportStation was able to ship on average only seven out of every 10 items ordered online; the remaining three would continue to show on portals even when they were out-of-stock.

With the automated updates of product data, SportStation now ships on average 9.5 out of every 10 orders, Bowen says. “We reduced out-of-stocks, and our growth is up 15% from that alone,” he says.

In addition, the automated system has enabled SportStation to cut its full-time customer service and warehouse staffs by a third, to 8 from 12 total positions, and to avoid having to hiring additional staff during peak periods, Bowen says.