Archive for eCommerce – Page 3

Office Chair Empire

Sean Belnick was your average fourteen years old buying, trading, and selling Pokemon cards. Sean found out that he could sell his most expensive pokemon on eBay. This sparked Sean’s interest in selling things online, he started selling things online and started to make some good money for a fourteen-year-old. One summer Sean went to go work with his dad at his furniture store. When he was there he realized that he could sell furniture in a fast and easier way. When he discovered this he locked himself in his room for three days and made the website we know today as Bizchair.com. He did this with five hundred dollars for advertising and one hundred dollars for the website. He started by selling a handful of office chairs by drop-shipping them to his customers.

With his advertising, he started to gain more tracking as a company and when he was twenty years old he mad thirty-eight million in revenue. He has sold over twenty-five thousand office chairs to  Microsoft, Google, and Abercrombie and Fitch. Sean was really a pioneer in the office chair industry. He was one of the first companies to sell large amounts of office chairs to consumers online. This made the buying process easier for companies by being able to buy large amounts of office chairs from one website. By doing this it streamlined the process of getting office chairs to the customers. Today Bizchairs has so many options for office chairs it appeals to a wide variety of people. Sean Belnick really changed the way people bought office chairs and has made some good money doing it.

Forever – the Memory Keepsake Website

Memory is one of the most treasured parts of each person’s story, but many people rely simply on their mental abilities to store their memories. In more recent years, social media has served as a platform to store memories, but it’s not the most dependable and they’re not platforms that will forever exist.

FOREVER is a 2012 Tech Startup, based out of Pittsburgh, that makes it easy for all of your memories to be “digitized, secured, and ready to be enjoyed for generations to come.” For a one-time price, customers are given what they call FOREVER Storage that’s guaranteed to last for your lifetime plus 100 years. The FOREVER Storage design ensures security by backing up in multiple places across multiple regions, which can be shared for generations to come.

The FOREVER business design is unique, offering an assortment of different ways that customers can creatively store their memories, whether through picture albums, different designs, scrapbooking, videos, or digital art. Their website not only offers their main product – FOREVER Storage – but also sells notebooks, a FOREVER Box, and photobooks.

Personally, this isn’t something that I would pay to use myself, but I can certainly see the attraction for people who want an easy, dependable way to store their pictures and videos so that generations to come can enjoy and easily access those memories. It’s worth checking out their website, despite your interest!

 

https://www.forever.com/

 

Couthy Complete Collection Digital Art - Digital Scrapbooking Kits

Cameron Johnson: Entrepreneurial Genius

Cameron Johnson has consistently showed great entrepreneurial potential from a very early age. He first started exemplifying his entrepreneurial instincts when he was five years old as he began selling vegetables to his neighbors. When Cameron was nine in 1994, he launched his first business from his house: Cheers and Tears. This company is dedicated to creating thoughtful and meaningful greeting cards. At just twelve years old, young Cameron was making more than $50,000.00 a year!

Cameron then invested in the purchase of 30 Ty Beanie Babies, a line of stuffed toys first founded in 1986. He then sold the Beanie Babies online for ten times the purchase amount on eBay. Cameron saw this investment opportunity and turned it into an official business idea by purchasing dolls at wholesale from Ty and reselling them on eBay as well has his greeting card website.

With the money Cameron had earned thus far, he has since used it as seed money to kick start his next entrepreneurial venture called My EZ Mail, a confidential email forwarding service. Within just a few months, Johnson was earning $3,000.00 in advertising revenue.

Cameron’s next project was called Surfingprizes.com, an advertisement service that put scrolling advertising on top of web browsers. Two features made this service unique. The first is that Surfingprizes users received twenty cents per hour to have the advertisement displayed on the screen. The second feature is that referral marketing is used to increase word of mouth conversions. This was accomplished through offering Surfingprizes users 10.00% of the revenue generated by each customer that was referred to the service. Fifteen-year-old Cameron was making as much as $400,000.00 a month, making him worth more than $1,000,000.00 before he graduated high school. In college, Cameron started CertificateSwap, an online software system, that he recently sold for a six-figure amount. To date, Cameron is twenty-eight years old and is worth a couple million dollars.

Image result for cameron johnson entrepreneur

Mo’s Bows

Moziah “Mo” Bridges loved to wear three-piece suits as he loved dressing up, but he hated the bow ties that were sold in stores. None of them were stylish enough for his taste to make him look sharp. At 9 years old, he created Mo’s Bows, to solve that problem.

When Mo came up with the idea for Mo’s Bows, his grandmother, a former seamstress, taught him how to sew. Mo, his mother, and grandmother all helped out sewing the ties in the early days of the company and ran the business from their home. He sold his creations to local stores and got attention of national press outlets like The Steve Harvey Morning Show and Oprah Magazine. This helped him land on an episode of Shark Tank in 2014, and got one of the best deals in the show’s history.

He landed a deal with Daymond John as Daymond offered to mentor Mo for free. Daymond said he identified with the young Mo working with this single mother and grandmother out of their house trying to grow their clothing business.

Since 2011, Mo’s Bows has brought in $600,000 in sales. The company now has seven full time employees, including Mo and his mother. He bow ties are still being made my hand in their hometown of Memphis, Tennessee.

This relationship opened up many doors for Mo, like getting his bow tie business in Neiman Marcus and Cole Haan stores. Recently, he scored a 7 figure licensing deal with the NBA to make bow ties for all 30 NBA teams. Daymond taught Mo about giving back, so Mo incorporated this and now has a redemptive side to his company: each year Mo creates a bow tie where all proceeds go to St. Jude’s Research Hospital.

Now at 17 years old, Mo is planning on having a complete fashion line by the time he is 20 years old. He wants to attend The Parsons School of Design in New York City pursuing a degree in Fashion Design. He added new clothing and apparel to Mo’s Bows including neck ties, pocket squares, t-shirts, and hats.

Mo found a problem in his passion of style and fashion and turned it into a $1 million company.

Check out Mo’s Bows here

Jack Ma and Alibaba

Jack Ma: Founder of Alibaba

Jack Ma’s story of rags-to-riches as a young man from China is one of the most inspiring entrepreneurial stories there is. Ma was born in Hangzhou, China to a poor household. As a young boy Ma always wanted to learn English, because he sensed that the language would one day be important on a national level. After failing two entrance exams, Ma ultimately made it to college and graduated from Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Ma then worked as an english teacher at a university prior to launching his entrepreneurial career.

Upon visiting America in 1995, Ma discovered the Internet and was in awe at the potential of the World Wide Web. Ma also noticed the rise in popularity of online selling by American companies, and realized that China did not have anything similar. After returning to China, Ma became inspired by what he saw in America and drew up a plan to create a Chinese e-commerce company, which he called, “Chinapage.”

After a failed attempt at growing Chinapage to the scale and power that Ma wanted, he left the company and took a job in the Chinese government. Ma made many connections in the government, but still had a grand vision for creating an e-commerce company in China, and left his government job in 1999 to start Alibaba. Ma’s goal was to create a company that would empower small and medium businesses in China to facilitate international trade without the intervention of the government. Ma was initially denied by silicon valley investors before receiving funding from both Softbank and Goldman Sachs to help fund Alibaba. After many years of Alibaba remaining non profitable, the company’s business model prevailed and the company overtook eBay as the largest e-commerce site in China.

While Alibaba faced many challenges throughout its history, the company was able to overcome those challenges to become china’s largest e-commerce site and one of the largest in the world. Alibaba faced lack of funding, slow growth, lack of an international appeal, and much more. In an interview, Ma stated: “Instead of learning from other people’s success, learn from their mistakes. Most of the people who fail share common reasons(to fail) whereas success can be attributed to various different kinds of reasons.” This is incredibly profound, as one of the most important lessons entrepreneurs are taught is that failure is ok. Ma exemplifies what it means to show perseverance, entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity. I learned from reading about Ma that failure is ok, and that you might have to fail many times before you succeed. I also learned how important it is to show perseverance, and trust in your business plan.

Ben Wolfgram

Ben Wolfgram is an entrepreneur and engineer.  He is the founder of a company in Philadelphia called WE Automation that designs and produces industrial machines for extrusion and blow molding, material handling systems, and packaging systems.  Why might he be of interest to me?  Because of a different company he started called BenShot.

BenShot is a handmade glass company in Wisconsin that makes unique glasses that feature bullets, shotgun shells, arrow heads, golf balls, and fishing lures embedded in the side.  Benshot was started in 2015 when Wolfgram wanted to make it easier for his glass-making parents to sell their wares.  Before Wolfgram started BenShot, his parents were traveling around the country to various craft, vendor and art shows.  Wolfgram thought it would be easier if his parents had an eCommerce store to connect with their customers instead of traveling around the country all the time.  His parents loved the idea and are now selling to an international customer base.

Wolfgram’s father manufactures the glasses along with a resident designer and glass worker in a historical furniture factory that was formerly owned by Thomas Edison, in rural Wisconsin.  The packaging, etching for the glasses, and wood etching for coasters, are done in Wolfgram’s WE Automation factory in Philadelphia.  Everything they design and manufacture is made and sourced in the USA.  Before creating their own glass factory, Wolfgram and his parents approached many different manufacturers and were told that their idea would never work and the only way to get an object to stay in the glass like Wolfgram wanted, would cause glass to break.  That did not stop Wolfgram and his father, they experimented with different and unconventional methods.  They figured out that if you make a dent in the glass while the glass is still soft, then glue the bullet, golf ball, fishing lure, or arrow head into the glass after it has slowly cooled off in a kiln, the glass will not shatter.

BenShot has also partnered with several companies to etch the company’s logo onto their glasses.  They have also made several limited runs of glasses raising money for various charities.  One of their most recent charities was Project K-9 Hero, a non-profit that provides assistance with medical costs, food, and end of duty services for retired police and military dogs.

Ben Wolfgram, and his company BenShot, is inspiring because he saw a need with his parents to connect with their customers without traveling all over the country, and combined it with the resources of his manufacturing company to create a unique eCommerce business.  Wolfgram and his father also had to create a new method of getting objects to stay securely in glasses without shattering the glass.  Due to their success, they are now able to give back to their community and country by partnering with various charities and non-profits as well.

Tobias Lütke – One of Canada’s Wealthiest People

You might not know his name, but if you have ever been interested in selling products online as a business, you might have heard of his company, Shopify. Tobias Lütke, listed at #90 on the list of Canada’s wealthiest people, is one of the three founders of Shopify and has risen as a giant in the world of eCommerce product selling.

Tobias Lütke, Shopify

Tobias Lütke was born at the very beginning of what is considered the Millenial, or Gen Y, generation (1980). In 2004, prior to Shopify, Lütke and two other founders wanted to start their own online snowboarding equipment business and found themselves unsatisfied with other eCommerce products that were available at that time. In 2009, they launched Shopify where other businesses could coders and developers could create their own applications and sell them on the Shopify store. Since its inception, Shopify has become a massive platform where small businesses can create online shops for their products and sell products directly to customers. There are currently 800,000 stores that are powered by Spotify, as had a 1100% stock increase since the company went 2015, where it started at $28, and is currently residing at $314 a stock.

As someone who is currently using Shopify in my eCommerce class, I can see why it is so popular. Starting a business has never been easier than before. If someone has a fully developed product and a domain, for only $30 a month, Shopify provides an outlet for individuals to create a website, list their products, and ship them to their customers. Lütke and the other founders saw a problem and capitalized on it at the perfect time, and it has made them a significant amount of money from it. In fact, according to statistics, Shopify’s total revenue, which comes from their various payment plans and percentages of sales, from 2018 was slightly more than $1 billion. As one of the “oldest” Millennial Entrepreneurs, Lütke has made quite a bit of money by creating a place where small businesses can achieve their dreams of crafting their own website and selling their products, which can’t be found on competing websites, such as Amazon and eBay.

Driven Media

Founded by Ed Hollands, Driven Media is a company that in essence mediates advertising on the sides of blank cargo/delivery trucks. He and his company vinal wrap trucks for companies that wish to advertise, as he claims each truck on average is seen by over 50,000 people! His business model is brilliant as everyone profits from the advertising and companies get their word out to people in a more inexpensive way than say a billboard. He offers his services in different packages to best suit potential clients’ needs.

27.09.17 Doncaster
Road Train: Hull Trains being trucked on the M18 near Doncaster as part of the Drivenmedia poster campaign for Hull Trains.
Also pictures is the founder of Driven Media: Edward Hollands.

 

Cameron Johnson- The Steps Of Becoming A Young Entrepreneur

Cameron Johnson started his business venture at the age of nine. While his piers were playing and being kids, Johnson had his mind on something else.

Young Venture

When Cameron Johnson was just nine years old he started making cards for his family on special occasions. Friends and neighbors started showing an interest and he was soon taking orders on to make cards for them. His first business was called, Cheers and Tears Printing Co.

After making $300 he started another business called Cheers and Tears Beanie Wholesale. With his second business he bought Beanie Babies whole sale and sold them making 10x more than he invested. He made $50,000 at the age of just 12.

A year later he started working on something else, but this time it was online. He created a service that forwarded emails to a specific account without showing any information about who sent it. He was unable to do the coding himself, so using his resources, he hired a coder to make it for him. This online service is called My EZ mail. This business made him $3,000 a month at the age of 13.

During his teenage years he decided to partner up with another teenager to make a online advertising company, called Surfingprizes.com; they would show advertisements on top web browsers for $.2 an hour. They started partnering with some big names making $300,000 a month. Before graduating high school he successfully led 15 start up businesses. He also wrote his own book about being a 15 year old entrepreneur.

Looking at what Cameron Johnson was involved in just before graduation can inspire anyone at any age. It is impressive how young and successive he was going through his business ventures as a kid. At this point in his life all of his assets added up to a over a million dollars, not too bad for a teenager. I also think its impressive to see what he started with and compare it to what he has now. He just started with a $300 dollar card making company and in 9 years he makes that into over a million dollars. Then it makes you ask the question, what can I do with the resources that I have?

 

The History of Etsy

Rob Kalin, Founder of Etsy

Etsy is an online marketplace where buyers and sellers can connect from all over the world to exchange unique handmade and vintage products. Etsy’s niche market attracts buyers who are looking to purchase personal handmade and vintage products that cannot be found anywhere else. Robert Kalin, Haim Schoppik, and Chris Maguire are three entrepreneurs and friends who founded Etsy in 2005. The trio wanted to build a business that catered to sellers and allowed for sellers to advertise their products as they pleased. The idea for Etsy was that a group of sellers would generate more interest from potential buyers than a single seller would selling handmade products.

The idea for Etsy was born out of Kalin’s need to find a marketplace for his wooden computer cases. Kalin was working on building a forum for woodcrafters around the same time, and saw that crafters were desperately looking for a way to sell their goods. Kalin immediately recognized the need for a marketplace that could cater to artisans and small businesses. Etsy was able to capture hundreds of thousands of sellers within months due to many different factors. Etsy mostly was able to attract feminist crafters from a growing feminist movement in the early 2000s and was also largely seen as a more seller friendly alternative to eBay. In addition, Etsy was able to appeal to the masses who were anti-establishment and anti-consumerism by selling handmade and vintage goods.

Etsy did have it’s shares of challenges in its early days. In an interview Kalin stated: “the launch actually wasn’t going quite fast enough, so Maguire and Schoppik ended up basically moving into my apartment and we spent a solid six weeks working on it day and night.” I admire Etsy’s entrepreneurs because they demonstrate work ethic and doing whatever it took to make sure Etsy had successful growth. I also like how the company took a bold stance on its views and appealed to certain niche markets as opposed to the masses. Kalin, one of Etsy’s chief founders demonstrates that determination and focus is needed to drive growth. Etsy’s founder’s have taught me that identifying issues can lead to innovation and creativity.