E-Commerce

Hello and welcome to the E-commerce section of my personal site. I was actually just telling my story of how I went from corporate middle management to owner of two businesses. If you missed the first half of the tale why not skip back a bit to the About Jonathan Goodman section of this website. If you’ve already been there, done that, then sit back and enjoy the read.

The severance package from Suburban was a pretty sweet deal. It consisted of about three quarters of my yearly salary once vacation was tallied as well as half of a year of healthcare. Plus I was off the hook in repaying the tuition Suburban laid out while I completed my MBA. Of course nothing compares to the joy of pulling a salary from a company you personally built.

Now I haven’t lied to you yet and I’m certainly not going to start now. So in all honesty it has not been the easiest road to travel. However, it has been the most rewarding. There is nothing more exciting then waking up in the early morning to find dozens of orders needing to ship out. Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, tells a great story about the first day his site was up and running. He programmed a bell to ring every time there was a sale. In the first couple of hours everyone got excited when the bell rung. By the end of the day they had to disconnect the bell because it was ringing all the time. Just like Mr. Bezos, I’ve set my computer up to ring each time a new sale comes in. Most days I have the volume turned off but on the days I have the sound up, it’s magical.

Having ran the Hometown Hearth and Grill e-commerce site five years previously, I knew there were some things I needed to change with the launch of Market Merchants. The most significant decision was to not sell anything with a shipping weight over 75 pounds. This included barbecue grills like the Weber Ranch Charcoal Kettle and fireplaces like the Ashley Ventless. At Hometown I found that nearly any profit made on these high priced items were immediately washed away by just a couple of bad deliveries or several problem customers. When an item weighs more than 75 pounds the shipping options are

1. You can have the item tossed off the back of a delivery truck to the foot of the customer’s driveway.
2. At an additional expense have “white glove” service bring the product into the customer’s home.

There are a slew of problems with both delivery options. Lessons learned at Hometown bear not repeating so no products sold over 75 pounds.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’ve lied to you. I actually do sell products over 75 pounds on Market Merchants. Well Market Merchants is an Amazon partner just as Hometown was previously. That means all our merchandise is available for sale at Amazon and I have the ability to add Amazon products on the Market Merchants site. I was never allowed to add Amazon products at Hometown and knew it would be another change I implemented for my own company.

Despite making excellent decisions I still found myself back at square one with Market Merchants. The Internet had gone from a wild west where everything and anything was possible to a totalitarian regime ruled by a single search engine deciding your fate. No longer was it enough to have good prices, free shipping, and readable content. With Google controlling the universe, I needed to learn how to speak their language and play by their rules. Additionally, the home décor industry had changed over the five years. When I first took over the Hometown site there were relatively few competitors dedicated to barbecue gas grill parts and fireplace accessories.

With barely any marketing budget and very few resources, I found myself needing to quickly learn the art of search engine optimization. At HomeTown products like Magic Colored Pine Cones and Lava Rock flew off the shelf. Those first couple of years at Market Merchants barely anything moved. In the first year of business we did less than fifty thousand dollars in sales. Since that time and with the implementation of a search engine strategy we have consistently doubled and often tripled each year. Now products like Aqua Spikes and Rock Wool sometimes move quicker than we can keep them in stock and our most successful categories are Fireplace Fire Starters and Ducane Gas Grill Parts.

Based on the success of my Internet marketing strategy for Market Merchants, I decided to start my second company focused on the needs of businesses to brand their identity online. To read more about that entrepreneurial venture please visit the consulting section of this website.