1-800-batteries gets a charge

Ken Hawk likes to keep things simple.

When he traveled to the big Comdex trade show in Las Vegas last year, he rented a motorhome instead of flying and staying at a hotel. His Web site is a case study of function over form.

Users click on the 1-800-Batteries page to buy batteries, to the tune of about $1.4 million last year. That’s roughly 18 percent of the Reno, NV, retailer’s total earnings.

So where did the president of 1-800-Batteries turn to give his Web storefront a charge? This week the company will announce a deal with New York interactive travel venture Biztravel.com, and later in the month it is expected to join forces with Denver-based TheTrip.com to enhance the Web presence with travel data.

“We’ve been thinking about content for a long time,” says Hawk. “In all of our focus groups, customers told us that they’re very frustrated when they travel. We’ve been trying to find a way to help them with information.”

1-800-Batteries began its search for a content provider in January. Hawk looked at several business travel information resources, including America Online’s Travel Channel, the Frequent Flyer Web site operated by OAG, TheTrip.com, and Biztravel.com.

“I liked the content and the organization of Biztravel.com,” says Hawk. “It had a nice, clean look and was intuitive and easy to use.”

Hawk approached Biztravel.com with a proposition: let’s trade content for customers. Put another way, 1-800-Batteries would send traffic with great demographics in Biztravel.com’s direction in exchange for access to the site’s destination data. 1-800-Batteries registers about 20,000 monthly visitors, most of whom are affluent and well-traveled.

The company also offered to plug the Biztravel.com site in stuffers that are mailed to customers with their batteries, reinforcing Biztravel.com’s primary concern of boosting the number of visitors to its site.

“Biztravel.com’s superior online business travel services are a natural fit with 1-800-Batteries,” says Heather Arnet, Biztravel.com’s manager of business development. “Both attract busy road warriors who need control over their hectic work lives. Now, these professionals can secure valuable travel reservations and information from the same place that they purchase batteries and other laptop accessories.”

But the Biztravel.com pact is only the beginning of 1-800-Batteries’ search for high-quality travel content. Although the details remain sketchy, the retailer is also set to announce an agreement with TheTrip.com, presumably to furnish it with more travel information.

“In an interactive environment like ours, we see more and more of these relationships occurring,” says TheTrip.com spokeswoman Donna Crafton. “They are very easy to develop and maintain because essentially they are linking relationships, rather than physical ones. We are able to share customers – and that customer base is very much the same-in these markets.”

Hawk’s company is an example of the recent partnering trend, with a twist. His isn’t a travel company, nor does he aspire to be a travel company. But his customers need travel information, and the data add value to the 1-800-Batteries site.

Biztravel.com’s Arnet notes that because travel is one of the fastest growing electronic commerce applications on the Internet, it follows that “other companies will want to add travel services and information to their sites.”

As far as the interactive travel industry is concerned, the question now is: How many other sites are out there with similar needs? There are no formal surveys on the size of this secondary market for interactive travel partnerships.

But it would seem that with a little creative thinking on the part of content providers, a world of new partnership opportunities could emerge. The benefits would be considerable. More traffic means more bookings, higher sales, more advertising revenue, and higher profits.

The 1-800-Batteries deal with Biztravel.com is a novelty today. Tomorrow, this kind of partnership might be a necessity.

“Travel information is appealing to us and to our customers, and I’m sure it’s appealing to others,” observes Hawk. “I would expect to see more deals like this soon.”

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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