Centurion Hobby Distributors is offering retailers a chance to set up a customizable online retail store with a live inventory of over 10,000 products.  The system is being offered to qualifying retail accounts, the main qualification being that the retailer has a brick and mortar retail storefront.  If the store meets the criteria, Centurion will activate an account and the retailer will be able to customize the basic Gameretailstore homepage with logos, as well as a choice of colors and backgrounds.  Retailers who already have Websites can utilize the online store as a 'deep stock' site, while those who don't can set it up as their primary site.  According to Centurion, customization should only take about a half an hour of the retailer's time.

The online store contains a live listing of over 10,000 skus in the New Jersey Centurion warehouse.  Consumers who shop at the online store will be able to place their orders and be certain that the item they want is actually in stock.  The end consumer prepays for the product while purchasing online.  The consumers can either have the product shipped directly to their home and pay the shipping charges, or they can have the item delivered to their local store with the store's next Centurion shipment and pay no shipping charges.  Since the items are prepaid, the retailer can be assured that consumers will show up to collect them (and hopefully purchase additional items while in the store).  Centurion handles the payment process as well as packing and shipping.  At the end of the month retailers will receive a credit from Centurion equivalent to 40% of all purchases made through their online stores.  Centurion will charge consumers sales tax (where appropriate) and will send retailers a check covering the sales taxes collected on a monthly basis. 

The online storefront features a listing of the top ten best-selling products, broken down by category, and updated nightly.  The rankings are based on the last 30 days of sales made by Centurion, not just through the online store.  The storefront homepage also lists new releases as they appear, which should make it even more useful for consumers.  The national gameretailstore.com site has a store locator service, which will list all participating retail stores.  Centurion's customizable online storefront is an excellent way for stores to offer a huge inventory, including many hard-to-find titles, without a huge investment.