Archive for the ‘Ecommerce’ Category
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
And maybe not for the reasons we think.
It browses beautifully. It’s battery lasts all day. It’s light. The color is beautiful. And quite simply you can hand it around the living room as you watch TV and ask your peers what they think about an article, video, post or perhaps more importantly, a purchase.
We have wondered and tested ourselves blue in the face to help determine why online conversion is low and unmovable. And it may be a simple few things like making the experience more friendly and welcoming to peers.
For instance I loved bring the Apple Air to bed to do my browsing…but the little fan couldn’t keep up and it would try to recirculate through my comforter; eventually the computer would slow and annoy me, the fan would whine, I’d feel guilty and I’d shut the whole mess off. But for the first fifteen minutes it was so much nicer than having 10 lbs. of laptop in bed.
I’m not saying the iPad brings you savior faire that before you lacked, but it is at least cool, quite, unobtrusive and can be disposed of or shared much more easily.
This is but one of the technology changes, be it pervasive broadband, to new computing forms that I believe will accelerate the ecommerce trends. There has never been a year where I’ve have more time in the day to go physically shopping and as the tools get better and the industry matures, tools like these may cause huge leaps in immovable conversion rates.
At least I’m hoping that.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Posted in Ecommerce, Mobile Internet | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
The simple answer is where it will garner you the most measurable sales. Not necessarily the most sales, but the most measurable. An unmeasured sale might not as well have happened. We learned that in 1998. Or started to.
And Chris Dixon, my new hero, recently mentions that the place to advertise is on the sites with the highest purchasing intent and then made some half-hearted suggestions around that without touching on the next real source of advertising revenue: The e-tailer.
Lets face it. Conversion has never been anywhere near where we think it should be. For politeness we’ll say that across the web 95% of browsers don’t convert. So we pay for 100% of visitors and get 5% of sales. That’s a mighty hard business to run. But if you begin both the habit of advertising where your customer is almost ready to buy, a competing etailer in your category, and you sell advertising to your competitors in the same way, it may happen that we create a layer of places that convert better for both sides. The vendors would do well to buy traffic from their retailers and yet still send or sell them as much traffic as they can. Our customers need whatever content they need in order to be comfortable to buy. Your site may have it for one type of customer but not for another.
We don’t know why people don’t buy the way they do in the offline world. But we can get one beat closer by selling and buying advertising nearest the heart of the purchase. It isn’t insane if it converts, both ways.
We may well find a new gold mine of advertising that goes many directions and yet raises nice high margin dollars. And even learn why we don’t convert at the rate we’d like.
Eventually the etailer, with its superior and unbiase customer content may find itself more as the central traffic source for quality traffic than as conversion vehicle. Wouldn’t that be funny.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Posted in Business Principles, Ecommerce | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
The snow has been dumping in Park City, Utah. Falling in huge car hiding piles…for the first time in one of the driest, saddest winters ever. And what drags me out of bed at dawn with a shovel and broken down snowblower was the fact that without some skinny path cleared to my door there was a chance that the FedEx guy might make me the last semi-blogger to get a hold of an actual iPad.
But FedEx came through and I plugged it in and waited for the lightening bolt to strike. I waited and failed through synch after synch…thinking it might be time for for Apple to spend a little time with the iTunes app and making it the happy center of the media universe that it’s supposed to be.
I keep hoping that iTunes will be great at synching this complex media world. And I keep hoping that somehow it will recognize that I am going to exceed the 16 Gigs right as I check the buttons of what I’d like on my iPad. But no, I wait, patiently and run through about fifteen dry runs before I get enough data off to make the iPad run.
But it’s not the optimum data load. But eventually I’ll get the hang of it.
And I inadvertently dumped all of the apps from my iPhone onto the iPad. What a mistake. A small iPhone app doesn’t belong on the iPad. Wait for those that are iPad ready.
And yet once it happens. Once the iPad fires up…the magic happens. It was when Netflix loaded that I first felt the magic. Just the media I want when I want it, beuatifully rendered. I preferred watching on my iPad than my 44″ 1080p flatscreen. The show felt more intimate. And the iPad never got warm in my lap. I thought I felt much of the media world begin shift to a new axis. And again and again as I loaded new apps I saw the media world shifting and twisting in, beginning to be caught between the old way of business and the new. Media will benefit first and suffer first. Commerce will come very shortly after.
We don’t yet know what the iPad will change . But there are some guesses:
- Ecommerce will shift toward home and couch and bed, from primarily work.
- The iPad will succeed
- Netflix is going to kill on the iPad.
- And the rest of the world is going to have to watch and wait to see what happens as we figure it out with them.
- Well designed ecommerce sites run just fine on the iPad. No need to hire firms to redesign for a small form factor. Just build beautiful simple focues ecommerce sites and QA on all top four browsers and you should be fine
- And build apps that have real single purpose that deliver value above and beyond the flat world of standard ecommerce site. It’s time to innovate in return for the gift that Steve Jobs has given us. He has allowed us to once again shift into the future.
Thanks Steve…it’s brilliant.
Popularity: 36% [?]
Posted in Business, Ecommerce, Gear, Mobile Internet | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
“(the iPad is) not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it” — Pogue In one sentence this anonymous scribe captured the essence of the iPad. It’s a consumer oriented cash generator with almost every form of payment waiting for you to join. We may well get out of this recession because Steve Jobs willed it to be.
One analyst just raised his 2010 sales number for the iPad to 8-10 million. Which is a ridiculous amount when you consider the category doesn’t exist yet. Which is silly for me to mention it’s not like the analysts spotted the housing crash, the dot com crash or any of the other eighty three recorded fiscal bubbles…but still, they are analysts and presumably they have more wisdom in their domain than I, so I listen.
But what I am guessing and feeling is that the iPad is going to revolutionize in a different way. The notion of personal browsing. That ecommerce+ will be at your fingertips and it will be incredibly powerful. This is not a browser who’s history you have to wipe to keep corporate from reading it, but instead your own that you carry with you…history of all messages, commerce browsing, blogging, writing, photography. The iPad will be the window into your own lives and others.
Ecommerce only represents 6% of total commerce in the US…but it’s the fast growing segment and will be for years to come. It is expected to grow 2% a year for the foreseeable future and that is without mobile factored in. The iPad will do an interesting thing in that it will help migrate those who have been resistant to ecommerce by way of a more friendly environment where commerce will, perhaps feel less threatening. So it will increasingly steal from the physical side of commerce. For the cognoscenti ecommerce will grow faster due to a deeper wallet share. Suddenly commerce that never would have happened over the web will be possible, be it the hot dog vendor or bike parts for a kick ass bike/community/commerce app. Those who comfortably spend on the web now will see their spending accelerate as the software grows to meet capabilities in the new hardware.
And in that way the iPad will work to combine the aspects of commerce that are already appealing with those of geo-tagging, nearest physical product, best price within five miles, and much more to move a large percentage of wallet share to the web. So ecommerce will grow, again at a much faster rate than it has. And it will grow in new, unexpected places that get the distinct advantages of this format. For instance in-game digital product sales might well grow at an astonishing rate.
And Android will follow along with their impossible to beat “Better Than Free” model and slowly and they will own the lower pricepoints. Yet this is a market that is already proven, the $275 netbook is very desirable. Add in a touch screen and phenomenal OS and it will be a dream browser. The Tablet is here to stay. And so is the app. A web page is nonspecific brochureware for the dying 2000s and an app is the perfect hyper-focused one purpose tool for which this generation was born to use.
High price-points will be Apple‘s as there is something luxurious in software and hardware designed together. But Android’s breadth of connectivity to massive data sets creates opportunities that I don’t have the brain power to imagine. Apple and Google do something that no other companies do, they create moments when the current and future exist at once. It’s this strange feeling, as if for a moment, we get a moment of living in the future just by way of a new product release. What a cool capability.
Tablets will not have to war for its share of computing. It will instead be the third form of computing and within 36 months the primary mode for ecommerce.We won’t stop using our laptops and desktops and we can’t give up our mobile phones.” The world never converges, it only diverges into more ways that we can stay in touch, buy, say hello, record our thoughts, support our existence.
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Popularity: 100% [?]
Tags: Android, apple, Business, Clients, E-Commerce, Electronic commerce, google, IPad, Mobile phone, Operating system, Safari, Steve Jobs, Touchscreen, Twitter, Website, WWW
Posted in Business, Business Principles, Ecommerce, Gear, Mind, Mobile Internet, Thoughts about Entrepreneurship, Writing | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
They launched the sixty second smart phone app that wil allow you to have any product for sale in sixty seconds, including photos. This may be the coming of the seccond age. All hail Ebay.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Tags: Assistance, Auctions, EBay, Servers, Shopping, Smartphone, Web Based, Windows
Posted in Business, Ecommerce | No Comments »
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Which is to say big and loud and fast and it’ll piss a lot of people off.
Ironically it’s those in the Netbook world who look shocked and say, “look how much more we give for half the price?” I’ve got bad news for Netbookians…your computers suck. They’re slow and painful and cramped. But oh yes, they were cheap. And we love cheap.
But the iPad isn’t a nicely done Netbook. It isn’t a Kindle with color. It’s not an iPhone that met a steam roller. It is the the next fom of computing and it’s beautiful. Yes, as always, it’s missing some things. But it’s not like a boat missing a motor. It’s more like, well, an iPhone that launched without cut and paste. We suffered along while we all worked to change the world.
The truth is we carry 100X the computer we need in our laptop most of the time. Buried in a slow loading inconvenient poorly designed behemoth. The iPad can accomplish 95% of what we need our laptops for. Oh, we won’t get rid of our laptops. That five percent is crucial. We will just add the fourth form of computing to our lives. And it will be beautiful and we will wonder in two years how we ever ordered off a menu that wasn’t pre-loaded in our iPad with our built in payment system.
The iPad is our wallet, portfolio, memory, communication, calendaring…well it’s our life. It’s just not our phone replacement. Our bags got lighter. We’ll take the laptops home one the weekends for heavy work.
Desktops? How cute…they’ll be good for towing behind cars or some such anti-world recreation. But the iPad will be our center.
And yes Android will follow and it will be good. It will be the Chevy 3/4 ton to the beautiful Pininfarina like lines of the iPod. Change is good and at first it will look effete and snobbish. But soon it will be real. And Microsoft and RIM and others will head for other shores, other businesses where they don’t have to compete with such smart people.. Most of our computing is simple and can even be fun. and it’s always better when it has location. The world continues to change whether we bought a two pound Droid with a worthless keyboard or not. The iPad makes me happy.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Tags: Add new tag, Android, apple, iphone, IPod, IPod Classic, Laptop, Microsoft, Pininfarina, Smartphone
Posted in Business, Business Principles, Ecommerce, Mobile Internet, Spirit, Usability | No Comments »
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
Phonegap is a new open source multi-environment development tool. One of my biggest fears around the incredible race between Apple and Android has been about the cost of doing dual application development. Mobile feels a scary enough jungle when you are looking at Apple development, but add in the multi-verse of Android phone builders with a myriad of screen sizes and other strangeness and it looks like a massive amount of friction. Thankfully the software world is filled with the smartest people in the world who perceive problems beyond the horizon time and again and rush to fill the coming void.
My guess is that the Apple Tablet will be an overwhelming hit which will change personal computing once again…but add yet another layer to development. And my guess is that Phonegap will be there quickly as well. So thanks Phonegap. Read about it on CNET
Popularity: 4% [?]
Tags: Android, apple, Apple Tablet, Articles, Directories, Handhelds, Open source, Programming tool
Posted in Business, Ecommerce, Mobile Internet | No Comments »
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
The iPhone is the most beautiful design and business exercise I’ve ever seen. I am happily humbled by Apple for their vision and incredible operational excellence. They saw and created a future of which I hadn’t even dreamed. The iPhone set me free.
And yet…so did Compuserve in its day. Compuserve and the Mosaic browser let me run about the web as fast as my 14.4k modem would allow, from one Star Trek fan site to another. And it became both my vocation and avocation. The iPhone, ten years after I first started working on the mobile web finally delivered on the promise of the richness of the web combined with dynamic community and localization. Thank you Apple.
When we take our first timid steps in a new technology we seek safety, familiarity and comfort; and the iPhone delivers. It lets us safely download apps that have been approved and search around the well lit corners of the nice part of Internet town…but it’s a bit like a cruise ship. You can’t ever really get in trouble. It’s kinda fun for a while, but the captain never invites you up to steer it or do donuts with the thing. And eventually you want to see the whole ocean.
And the Droid…well, it’s like Netscape 1.0. It crashes more than I did in high school, which is to say, a lot. And it lets you get the full unfettered internet, location and community access. Want to download an app that steals your private data…go ahead. Want to download an app that instantly violates federal wiretapping statutes…it’s one click. Seeking something really unsavory, it exists or is in development right now. I don’t even dare to imagine the things that are to come.
The world of Adult entertainment has often been the north star of the internet, showing us where web business is going. Take a look at the origins of most video streaming software or even internet traffic tracking companies.
And trust me, the iPhone’s bevy of bikini girl apps is really not going to satisfy the seemingly insatiable cultural appetite for prurient content. And in that part of the world the Droid wins hands down. The porn world has gotten a seat back in the game.
In the 90s Yahoo failed when it couldn’t keep up with the endless requests for sites to be added to its directory. It was excruciating to wait and see if your site would get accepted and practically business death if you weren’t. And Yahoo was unblinking as they ignored every request for information on how or whether you would get in. Even when they started charging $300 to get guaranteed placement it still didn’t really satisfy a webmasters desire for instant inclusion. Which is why DMOZ came about and eventually things like Wikipedia. The community does a better job policing massive amounts of content then a small group of censors with unclear by-rules.
And the four week wait for a developer to see if their efforts to fly in the Apple world just isn’t going to work. In the Web3.0 world we are being trained to expect real time in absolutely everything.
Android delivers the vicious one-two punch of instant inclusion and boundless content. And that is too mighty for Apple to beat. In the late 90s we ran as fast as we could from AOL into the arms of Earthlink and Comcast so that we could get the full web and not the pre-chewed variety. In 24 months or less the iPhone will be the choice of fussy Meerschaum pipe smoking ascot wearing professors and the rest of the world will be carrying Android 4.o phones that allow us full unfettered access to the world of content and applications.
It seems likely that a wikipedia of applications will come to fruition with a community of trusted testers and a standards body run by the community will come about. And when we see that BBB of mobile web, we will find trust. Until then, buyer beware.
But it’s going to be a cool winding road getting there…filled with missteps, crashes and eventually government intervention.
And Google will become a bevy of little Googlets, split up by the privacy fear mongers. This is the coolest movie I’ve ever not seen and I can’t wait.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: AOL, apple, google, Handhelds, iphone, Mobile Web, netscape, Porn, Smartphone, Streaming media, Wikipedia, Yahoo
Posted in Business, Ecommerce, Mobile Internet, Thoughts about Entrepreneurship, Usability | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Here’s a video about how we used to market at Backcountry.com circa 2007. It’s kind of a B- performance. Sorry. There is some good data in here though:
This is a link that may or may not work to a speech to a BYU entrepreneurship class circa 2007.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: Affiliate marketing, Backcountry.com, Business, Consulting, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Tips
Posted in Backcountry.com, Business, Business Principles, Ecommerce, Gear, Thoughts about Entrepreneurship | No Comments »
Monday, November 16th, 2009
Wow. When Goliath finally decides to step up and kill David you expect some fireworks. I mean Motorola isn’t exactly new at cell phones. They practically invented the Bat phone and those huge things that Crocket and Tubbs lugged around on ‘Vice. So when Google and Verizon and Motorola teamed up for the wireless Malachi Crunch I expected something really cool. Unfortunately the first go round with it suggests that it kinda sucks.
I remember my two year-old son was able to operate my iPhone and unlock it on his own. He was quickly navigating through the interface without any help. I was able to make the iPhone work without resorting to a manual. I was annoyed by the touch screen typing but I got used to it in a few weeks. Already I’m jonesing for my touch screen QWERTY. The Droid is confusing and awkward and lacks, well, UI. As the CTO at my company often says, “soft is hard”. And boy the User Interface just plain stumps someone with my room temperature IQ.
The hardware is okay. The flash on the camera is nice and the speaker is better. There’s a nice use of vibration/haptics in the interface that I like. And it’s got a nice heft to it so when I finally get annoyed enough it’ll go clear through the window as opposed to bouncing off as the iPhone might.
I will say it’s better. The iPhone has forced the rest of the world to raise the level of their game. But all you Verizonites who can’t seem to understand that it’s only about $100 to break your contract will be happier on the Droid than on the DOS like Blackberry. But it’s no iPhone. The droid is the Corvette of phones…which is nice if you’re into that kind of thing.
The game isn’t over.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Tags: google, Handhelds, iphone, Mobile phone, Motorola, Smartphone, Touchscreen, User Interface
Posted in Body, Business, Ecommerce, Gear, Thoughts about Entrepreneurship | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Ten years late mCommerce has arrived. Due to our convoluted quilt of 12 wireless technologies like the laughably bad TDMA (AT&Ts previous technology that could manage only eight calls per cell) we find ourselves arriving a decead after iMode revolutionized Japanese pop culture.
Apple‘s iPhone strategy has been the most beautiful business ramp in the history of technology. The OS is, despite some minor flaws, excellent. A year ago it became the one material possession I would save with me if there was a fire (pardon the duh factor of grabbing a phone). In the past my laptop was my most vital possession and yet quickly my iPhone has supplanted. Yet convergence is just as far in the distance as it ever was. I use my laptop just as many hours a day…it’s just the the iPhone has eaten up all the space that comes between. Even a pause in conversation is enough to have me idly unlocking the phone, considering a spin through the app store. Divergence is alive and well as it always has been.
Much of the business world is still grappling with what kind of opportunity the iPhone really represents. Often the thinking goes that mCommerce should be like the Tommy Hilfiger web model. I believe that is the wrong tack, taking traditional eCommerce and just shrinking it to a smaller form factor.
What needs to exist is the notion mobile is leading us to a new model for computing that I’ll call for the moment, Better than Web.
Better Than Web is, well, just like it sounds. eTailing always runs a few years behind the content revolution and generally also just doesn’t do things as beautifully. There isn’t an ecommerce site in the world that has anything like Facebook’s beautiful UI and phenomenally layered business logic. I dream of an eTailer that hits even 70 percent of the Facebook mark.
And in the world of Apps the gap between the A players and the eTailers is larger. I have yet to se
e an etail example using GPS, shared browsing, haptic interface, audio, accelerometer and more. With GPS, turn by turn navigation and some simple work Walmart could have every one of their store’s guide you through a real map your current stadium like store. Add a list function and it could walk you to each product you need while offering you coupons on nearby or similar items. Average cart could climb and time in store could go down. Need a clerk. Hit the big panic button and scan the bar code and have an instant call back…from the call center in Mumbai.
And for us rare pureplays the world just gets rosier. Show only reviews from my state, current location, in the last fifteen minutes, from my friends, etc. No longer need a person in Naples Florida be greeted by puffy down coats on the homepage. We could actually personalize. If it’s a ski site like ours and we’re able to track vertical skied in one day then we would know much better what skis to recommend.
Simply put, in eTailing your retail App better not be a slimmed down dimmer retail store with itty pictures that works in conjunction with your web site. It instead needs to be the next generation or etailing offer much much more. The move to dynamic localized and personalized content just moved up a few years. Ebay is averaging $89.95 per download in revenue and we haven’t even hit the holidays. Mobile is the future of etailing, duh. And Better Than Web is the future of mobile.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: App Store, apple, Facebook, GPS, Handhelds, iphone, Japanese language, Smartphones, Technology, Tommy Hilfiger
Posted in Backcountry.com, Business, Business Principles, Ecommerce, Mind, Thoughts about Entrepreneurship, Usability, Writing | No Comments »
Monday, June 1st, 2009
The first rigid frame tent Dad bought was a tan three-man from LL Bean back when they were the cool gear company. Dad was in awe of its ability to hold itself up just by flexing a few aluminum poles. When the coastal winds of Maine ripped the tent off the beach and flung it skating across the ocean surface Dad just said, “wow, look at it float, look at the way it holds its form.” He watched until it sailed out of sight.
Last night I spent eight hours gear testing a Tent Cot—the unholy mating of a hunting cot and a boy scout tent—and thinking semi-deep thoughts about tent design and tent life. Any time I was tempted to stray to a different topic another drop of water would form on the nylon ceiling above my forehead and, water torture style, get me back on track.
I remember the Bedouin-style tents Dad would erect every summer on the coast of Maine. The gargantuan center pole was as heavy as an I-beam, surrounded by four stout pig iron poles at each corner. The trick was to rig a series of high-tension guy lines all around the tent—and in the full dark of the first night Dad would swear a blue streak as he rigged these origami like structures. The lines functioned like crafty trip-wires and at least once every trip I’d bring the homestead tumbling down when I face-planted over a line. Our clan of seven lived in these circus domes for three weeks every summer. Dad called it vacation.
The best-designed tent I ever spent the night in was on a bitterly cold -26º Vermont night, with winds peaking at over 50 mph. We were students of Sterling College on a four day winter hike and the only tent materials we were allowed were two sheets of cheap plastic and some rope. My hiking partner Steve Bastress channeled MacGyver as he bent a 12-foot sapling over, sheared off two downward facing limbs, and made stakes out of them. Then, using 18 inches of line, he staked the tip of the tree to the ground, forming an arch. Over the top of the arch he strung one plastic sheet. The limbs of the tree splayed naturally to form the perfect frame of a dome tent. All night long we heard our teammates’ two-stick-poles-and-a-plastic-sheet tents whipping about and collapsing.
In the morning the instructors seemed to feel we’d bent the old “leave only footprints, take only artifacts” commandment when we hacked into the virgin sapling. Apparently it was okay for them to teach us Swedish limbing techniques in class, but it was not so kosher to practice it in the field. These outdoor instructors, so fussy.
Last night I lay in the badly leaking Tent Cot and looked enviously out on The North Face Vector that I had foolishly loaned to a friend. Throughout the pounding hail and rainstorm I watched my loaner tent sit unperturbed. In the flash of lightning I could see the Unobtanium poles–as light as a muon–hold the shape of the tent just so and send the water packing.
In the morning I was wet in that eight-hours-in-a-completely-soaked-sleeping-bag kind of a way. My buddy hanging in my TNF continued to saw logs as I glared in his direction. To fail at Warm and Dry 101 is a quick Darwinian slap, a reminder that in many ways we are lamer than those who came before us. Dad would have rigged up some line and oil skin to keep himself dry. Steve Bastress would have built a log cabin. Me? I’ll be getting my Vector back.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Posted in Backcountry.com, Ecommerce, Family, Gear, Intros, Mind, Powder, Writing | No Comments »
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
BackcountryStore.com Gets No Love
LoveSac wins Ernst & Young Entreupreneur of the Year Awards
HEBER CITY, Utah (Draft) – In a lopsided victory LoveSac beat the stuffing out of BackcountryStore.com to become the 2003 Entreupreneur’s of the year. When asked for his reaction BackcountryStore.com CEO Jim Holland said, “Dang.” Co-founder John Bresee’s reaction was “Once again we’re standing in the shadow of Love.”
The upside was that the BackcountryStore.com execs finally had a reason to have a dress code, even if it was just for an evening. They knew the awards ceremony would be a glitzy affair, broadcast to a live audience of 1,200 on abig-screen televisions and attended by the governor–the pair decided that the GORP-centric attire they sell on-line wouldn’t be appropriate apparel in which to accept their award (bahahaha-jokes on them…there’s no award for second place). Bresee and Holland donned formal garb and neck ties for the first time in the companies history. BackcountryStore.com employee number two, Bob Merrill, quickly labeled them as “sellouts” and “corporate suck ups”.
However, when the winners of the respected awards were announced, and LoveSac, a Salt Lake-based manufacturer of beanbag like furniture, was named the winner in the emerging category, the web-based purveyors of high-end outdoor equipment knew they had underestimated their competition. “We got beaned by LoveSac” said a dejected Bresee. LoveSac has been a corporate rocket ship, achieving $5 million in annual sale in only two years of business and signing up new franchisees at a rate of one every two weeks.
“In truth”, said Holland, “I’m incredibly impressed with everything that LoveSac has accomplished and we’re very honored that Ernst and Young included us in their competition. It’s an honor to be in the same room with such a talented and brilliant field of entrepreneurs.
BackcountryStore.com was one of 24 finalists for the 10th annual Utah 2003 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, which are co-sponsored by Utah Business magazine. The finalists were chosen from approximately 50 nominations, and the “emerging” category focuses on relatively young businesses.
BackcountryStore.com – which was named one of 2002’s top 50 e-commerce sites by Internet Retailer Magazine – sells high-end, specialty gear for backcountry adventures, including skiing, snowboarding, climbing, trail running, camping and hiking. The company was founded in 1997 by Holland, a six-time U.S. National Ski Jumping Champion, and Bresee, former Powder Magazine Editor. For more information, visit www.BackcountryStore.com.
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Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted in Backcountry.com, Business, Ecommerce | No Comments »
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
Ski shops rule. I’m not talking Sports Authority’s generic pile O’ crap, but the real deal ski only ski shops. The kind of shop that smells of funky burnt p-tex, shuts down when summer rolls around and is filled with the pure love of sliding on snow. As a kid I spent hours hanging around Omer and Bob’s Ski Shop in Hanover, New Hampshire; dreaming of when I would get my first new pair of skis (Kastle) or when I would be able to ditch my lame Salomon 101s and get a sweet pair of Burt Bindings (never happened).
Fast forward 20 years and I find myself launching a ski shop. Hopefully the ski shop. For some reason shops on the web seem to lack the passion of brick and mortar shops. Instead of purely focusing on skiing they seem to veer off and sell any damn thing. Wooden summer chairs, fanny packs, and butt ugly one piece powder suits.
Not in this house. At Tramdock we are selling the best ski gear on the planet backed by the best service. We have a room, somewhat stinky, filled with full-on 100 day tram riding fanatics, sitting by the phone waiting for you to try and stump them. When the phone isn’t ringing they are picking and packing boxes or writing reviews of the gear. Our catalog manager hit Alta’s slopes at 6 am this morning and skied 24” of fresh Charmin smooth pow. Alta doesn’t open for another 20 days.
This company is an offshoot of Backcountry.com, the hardcore outdoor gear fanatic’s site. Tip of the Toque to the hippy’s across the hall…we love ‘em but we’re over the patchouli lovefest and wanted our own patch of the Internet. I’d been bitching at my business partner, Jim, for the last three years about this idea. Saying, “we can build the most core ski site on the web…just kick down the cash you motherless tightwad.” It’s understandable that it took him awhile with that kind of cajoling. At any rate, it looks like a goer. By this time next year the Tramdock crew will have several thousand more days under their belts, millions of feet of ‘vert and be running the Best Ski Shop on the Planet: Tramdock.
Pray for snow,
John
Popularity: 1% [?]
Posted in Business, Ecommerce | No Comments »