By Samantha Murphy

Patrick Byrne is CEO of online shopping site Overstock.com.

(February 25, 2010) As chairman and CEO of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne heads up one of the most popular shopping sites on the Web. The site, which sells surplus and closeout merchandise in a wide range of categories, draws between four and five million unique visitors each month.

Associate editor/Web editor Samantha Murphy spoke with Bryne, 47, about the company and its plans going forward.

Overstock.com continues to expand despite decreased consumer spending. What’s your secret?
We’re always been focused on providing great value on products for our customers so that they can save money, and it’s really resonated in the current state of the economy. In addition, we are a customer-centric company that is obsessed with making the customer experience easy and smooth. We’ve had great success with this: In fact, we were just recently rated No. 2 in customer service by the National Retail Federation for the second year in a row.

How has the economy impacted the company’s business strategies?
Last year was about smoothing our site out by stripping expenses, getting the best products on our site and passing the best deals we find on to the customer. The American consumer has really tightened their purse strings over the past year or so and has ultimately become smarter about how they spend money. We’ve always been about providing the best deals, but we really stepped up to the plate this year.

What is your biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge that we face at Overstock.com is understanding the new customer and their shopping behavior. We are in a good spot though -- as more and more consumers switch from shopping at brick-and-mortar stores to the online channel, many aren’t switching back.

What’s in store for Overstock in 2010?
We are still growing, and plan to add new stores on our site this year, as well as a wider variety of products and -- of course -- lower prices. As a part of an effort to grow international sales, we added 32 more countries to our international shipping roster in January. We now serve over 90 countries worldwide, which is a great accomplishment from our international service launch in August 2008.

We also plan to expand our new O.biz venture, which is a shopping destination site we introduced in October 2009 for small, medium and large size businesses. O.biz offers a wide variety of high-quality, brand-name business and bulk products, such as hotel, office and restaurant supplies. We created this site to provide the lowest prices on thousands of business-oriented items that we never offered in this marketplace. We believe it’s a great fit for local business owners. We also plan to expand our m-commerce strategy in 2010, as well.

How does Overstock.com plan to grow its mobile presence? 
Mobile commerce is undeniably growing, and more and more consumers adjusting to a more mobile-centric lifestyle. We already have a developed m-commerce site, but recently launched an innovative app for the iPhone and iTouch, which allows users to easily search, browse, select, and purchase every item that is available on Overstock.com. Shoppers can still buy brand-name products at prices up to 70% off, while enjoying the same, simple experience they are used to and still have access to our customer care team.

The app also includes a fun, daily Lott-O game that allows customers the chance to win exclusive discounts toward purchases. This is a great feature that keeps consumers interacting with the brand on a daily basis, and it also reinforces the value-conscious nature of the brand.

How is Overstock leveraging social networking to reach consumers? 
In addition to using Facebook, we are working with CheapTweet.com, a Twitter-based deals search-engine, to maximize our Twitter presence. It allows us to pull all of our Twitter deal postings into one central location and in front of the eyes of the many CheapTweet users. Social media is a key initiative for us to interact directly with our customers and share special discounts with our most loyal shoppers. It’s also a great way to get our deals out in front of an established audience of enthusiastic online bargain hunters.

Like many retailers, we are still figuring out the best ways to embrace social networking. I like to think of social media as though it were Bam Bam from the Flintstones. Nobody has it quite figured out, but they know it’s very powerful.