Arrow Models and Toys is one of Scarborough's landmark retailers. Independent and successful for many years, they are probably best known for radio control models.
They were one of the first companies I got in touch with regarding websites, even before I took my degree, when I used to run a marketing consultancy and collaborate with a web development company in London.
Now, before we get too deep into this, almost nothing you see on the page is actually mine. The client wanted a low cost e-commerce site so we went with osCommerce which is open source and therefore free to use, and free to amend.
My role was, essentially, to advise that direction, and then set it up ready to go.
It turned out, in the end, that the budget we had wasn't really enough to do everything the client wanted once he'd seen its capabilities. There was a spare person in the shop who could work on it, but really the owner, being an ex-engineer and programmer himself, took it on and, with a few get-outs and tips from me, re-jigged the whole thing to suit. The only thing I can see that remains of what I did is the photograph on the about-us page. I think he's done a cracking job.
So why am I writing this up as a case study? Because it turns out that my role was to set them off on the right road. If you are IT-capable, don't want to spend a fortune, don't want to spend anything on ongoing licences or upgrades, and you want to run an e-commerce operation; perhaps you can with osCommerce. Particularly if I set it up and start it off for you, and show you how it fits together.