Ecommerce Conversations

The idea for Chisos boots started with back pain. Will Roman, the founder, owner, and lifetime cowboy-boot wearer, injured his back in a motorcycle accident. Wearing boots became painful. So he launched Chisos.com, a high-end, handcrafted bootmaker, in 2019. Quality and craft drive Roman and his outlook on life.

I've interviewed entrepreneurs for this podcast who developed organic consumer-care goods. But none did it before Eric Malka. He and his wife, Myriam, devised shaving oils from their kitchen in 1996 and then launched The Art of Shaving. Their new company, Ingredients, focuses on wellness and sustainability.

Imagine selling home gym equipment online at the onset of the pandemic. Athletic clubs were closed. Consumers were stuck in their houses. According to Kaevon Khoozani, the founder of Canada-based Bells of Steel, the demand for weight-training equipment was “obscene.” “We ran into two giant hiccups,” Khoozani told me.

Most entrepreneurs start with a business idea and then secure the domain name. Peter Askew does the opposite. He purchases domain names and then builds the business. Take VidaliaOnions.com, for example. Askew purchased the name in 2014. It's now a thriving farm-to-door seller of Vidalia onions.

Jay Sauceda launched his ecommerce fulfillment company, Sauceda Industries, in 2013 in Austin, Texas. He says packing and shipping products is easy. What's difficult, he stated, is managing unforeseen events. "The shipping business is, essentially, the exceptions management business," he told me.

Having co-founded Feat Socks in 2015, Taylor Offer hired Aly Raisman, the gymnast, to design and promote a custom sock. It generated $500,000 in revenue. Influencer marketing was clearly effective, and Offer wanted more. "I started looking at the kids that got famous from Vine, the short-video app," he told me.

Marco Marandiz is a musician turned software engineer turned product designer. He's worked for Capital One, HomeAway, and a failed startup. But it was his ecommerce consulting work for companies with unproven inventory that sparked the idea for Drop Party.

Johnathan Ruggiero and his wife Michelle founded Manly Bands, a direct-to-consumer online men's wedding-ring company, in 2016. To compete, their rings had to be unique — really unique. "We try to develop what we call show-stopper products," Johnathan told me. "People might say, 'You have dinosaur bones? That's crazy. You have meteorite? That's nuts.'"

Judson Morgan is a Los Angeles-based actor and director. He owns an agency that creates films and other visual content. He's also a successful ecommerce entrepreneur — with a purpose. He told me, "I have zero interest in making money off of a random product. I wanted to build a real brand that people could resonate with." That brand is Benevolence Los Angeles, an Amazon-focused gift boutique.

Kate Knecht is the fourth-generation owner-operator of Tomlinson's Feed, a family-owned retail business with 16 brick-and-mortar locations in Central Texas. The company is 75 years old. Amid the pandemic and the onslaught of online behemoths, can such a business transition to 2021 consumers? I asked Knecht that question and more.