This is the third in a series about retailers bolstering their Web sites in time for holiday sales. Read about PC Mall's  fraud-fighting tactics and Hanover Direct's  online marketing efforts. More retail stories to come.

Anaconda Sport is putting its new Web platform to the test this holiday shopping season. The Lake Katrine, N.Y.-based retailer took drastic measures this spring, opting to rebuild rather than augment its Web site infrastructure to address Web performance concerns.

Anaconda had outgrown its existing Web infrastructure, which was better suited for the sporting goods retailer when it had only 500 products, says Rob Meyer, director of Internet services. Today Anaconda offers more than 4,000 products and needs a more robust system to handle its many affiliate sites, which it builds and manages for organizations such as Babe Ruth League of North America and Men’s Senior Baseball League.

"Our site couldn't handle the traffic we were encountering. We needed to upgrade fast," Meyer says.

The retailer went live in May with its new Web infrastructure, which is hosted by SCS, an IBM reseller. The system combines IBM’s DB2 database software, running on Linux servers, with WebSphere Commerce Server and WebSphere Application Server, both running on Microsoft's Windows 2000 servers. The platform is integrated with VeriSign’s Payflow Pro payment-processing service and UPS WorldShip service for automating Internet orders, Meyer says.

The new system eliminates many manual processes and consolidates the company’s back-end systems, which simplifies the process of building customized Web sites for Anaconda’s customers and partners. "Without WebSphere, to build a store for the Babe Ruth League or Little League would have taken about four to six weeks,” Meyer says. “With WebSphere, it takes me a day or two to build a new site. It's all integrated into one database, one back-end system."

For Anaconda, this holiday season is something of a trial period to see how its new Web site infrastructure will perform during the company’s peak business period: January to June, when the majority of its sports league customers order team apparel.

So far the retailer's 2003 holiday sales are roughly 30% greater than its 2002 holiday season, Meyer says.