In 1996, Steve Antisdel and his brother bought Bookout Furniture from their retiring uncles, Bob and Ray Bookout. It was Steve’s 28th year working in his family’s furniture business in Niles, Michigan. The company had a showroom and an outlet store that totaled 40,000 square feet and 35 employees. Revenues, under $3 million a year, came through sales to customers within a 50-mile radius. There was limited growth potential. “It was just a bricks-and-mortar business,” Steve Antisdel says. “We weren’t looking to open new stores.”
But an idea had also hatched in his head of building an online component to the business. Antisdel, now 47, saw great promise in creating a virtual furniture store on the Internet—an e-commerce site where people across the United States could find a large selection of quality furniture at discount prices. The furniture would be shipped directly from the manufacturer or distributor, at no extra charge.
Spurred on by his son, Shane, who was eager to try e-commerce, the elder Antisdel committed the company to creating a site. By the end of 1996, after four months of work, they had launched furniturefind.com. The impact on the modest family business has been tremendous. Today the Web site gets between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors a day nationwide, many times the local foot-traffic in the two stores. Steve Antisdel expects the company to reach record annual revenues of at least $15 million in 2000. “E-commerce has been where all the growth is,” he says.
Orders from furniturefind.com now top $1 million a month, accounting for 80 percent of the company’s revenues. On average, revenues for the site in 1988 and 1999 grew at a whopping 90 percent per quarter. The e-commerce business is nearly doubling every three months.
Steve Antisdel belongs to a growing legion of family business owners who are finding success in the swiftly expanding arena of e-commerce. E-commerce revenues will reach $900 billion a year by 2002, according to International Data Corp. At Forrester Research, the projections call for $3.2 trillion in global online revenues by 2003.
The Antisdels got in early on the e-commerce game. They were first in their market, and being first is always a good way to build name recognition for your company and visibility for your products. But more important to succeeding in e-commerce is offering something online that is different, a product, service, or degree of customer interactivity—or an entire new niche—that distinguishes your offerings from the rest. It’s never too late to begin, because the e-commerce pie continues to expand rapidly. As other owners, including several profiled below, have found, if there’s a steady market for your product in a traditional environment, there is most likely a potential market online. Finding out isn’t necessarily expensive, and there are plenty of resources and vendors to help you get started (see the various sidebars to this article). In truth, if a family business is not yet engaged in e-commerce, it’s time to take a hard look at why not.
Commitment is first step
Getting involved in e-commerce doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, and you don’t have to be a computer geek to do it. There may even be a benefit to having waited until now; you can learn from others’ mistakes. What is required, however, is some significant level of commitment to making it work.
“Some businesses underestimate the amount of time that management will need to spend to bring the process along,” says Charles Levin, who teaches about the Internet at Fairleigh Dickinson University and runs Pathfinder Consulting (www.outofchaos.com). “A good idea is to assign one person to keep on top of it who has the time to make it happen.” This is often a member of the younger generation, like Shane Antisdel, 27, who had the idea for the Antisdels’ very first Web site.
At first, the Antisdels put up a simple “billboard” site, which provided information on the company’s products but didn’t allow customers to buy directly online. “We told our story and people started calling from outside our usual customer area saying, ‘How can we buy from you?’” Steve Antisdel says. “My son and I realized that maybe the market was trying to tell us something.” That’s when Shane started working full-time on the site, with considerable input on content from his father and others at the company. In four months they greatly expanded the site and gave customers the ability to order directly online. They did all the work in-house, with the total cost under $50,000.
At the time, furniturefind.com was the first comprehensive site on the Internet selling furniture. There was an industry belief that people would not buy a chair they had not seen and sat in while visiting a store. The Antisdels proved that wrong, and the field has been flooded with competitors ever since (at least seven other well-bankrolled sites).
The Antisdels have continued to grow because they have consistently provided superior service. Even though the furniture ordered online is shipped for free directly from manufacturers or distributors, the items are also sold in the Antisdels’ stores. Therefore, salespeople are familiar with the goods and can answer questions from online inquirers, which greatly improves their comfort level with buying furniture at a distance.
“You have to decide what your strategy and selling model are going to be,” says Levin: “Why should anyone buy from you rather than someone else? There’s so much clutter on the Internet that you really need to figure this out, to find your niche.”
The Antisdels’ sales model emphasizes making customers feel they are in control. The site gives customers lots of information to ensure they are happy with their purchases. It allows them to send e-mail and questions to furniture “advisers”—people who have worked in the stores and know the products. The staff also responds to service needs promptly, so that when a button pops off the sofa and gets lost, the customer can get a new one. Such steps reassure consumers who might be hesitant about buying a new living-room piece without touching it in person.
Finding a niche is key
Sometimes a company fills a niche on the Internet that isn’t necessarily the same as the niche it occupies in its traditional business. David Brough, 21, realized a sideline was where real profits would be for his family’s company, after he had created a basic Web site for the business, J.P. Faddoul Co.
J.P. Faddoul (www.jpfaddoul.com) is a giftware shop and bridal registry in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. While most of its business is selling new sets of china and other gift items to customers in town, it has always had a small but steady demand for individual pieces of discontinued china patterns. The small company has amassed a big inventory of these patterns over the years. On the Web, this has become the main attraction that brings people to the site. “Discontinued patterns are usually in great demand,” Brough says. “What can you do when you need a new teacup” for a service of eight?
Visitors to the site enter the name of a piece and pattern in a brief online form. Brough checks his inventory and industry sources and e-mails them back. Customers can order a found piece by phone or fax. Of course, they sometimes buy other items, and tell friends about Faddoul, broadening the customer base. Brough gets orders from across the country.
Brough, a college senior who runs the business part-time with his mother, Mary Brough, and grandmother, Helen Faddoul, started the site on a shoestring. His biggest expense was buying a new computer and scanner for $2,500. After that, what went into producing the site was mostly sweat equity.
Brough admits he “knew nothing about the Internet” when he started. But he did have an idea that the Internet could help expand sales. He took a college computer class that taught him enough so he could buy an off-the-shelf software program to create an e-commerce site. Brough used a popular package called FrontPage 2000 from Microsoft (for others, see “Building and running your site,” below). It took him three weeks to build a site displaying 25 products.
His mother and grandmother were involved in designing the site from the beginning. “We all decided together,” Brough says. “We still discuss things that we want to change. Once you’ve got a Web site up, you’re constantly changing it, adding new products and new looks.”
It’s critical for businesses to keep working on their sales approach, says Geoffrey Bock, a senior consultant for e-commerce with the Patricia Seybold Group, a Boston-based technology consulting firm. Will you emphasize merchandise or services, low price, fast delivery, great customer service, online ordering or referral to dealers? “This is an ongoing process where you are going to continually revise your site and your e-commerce strategy,” Bock says. “You learn as you go.”
The Faddoul site now displays 50 products, though it doesn’t yet allow customers to make credit-card purchases online. Brough says he hopes to have a fully interactive e-commerce site with his entire inventory in the next 6 to 12 months.
But even with limited e-commerce capabilities, Brough reports that the Web site has doubled orders for the tiny company and its three family employees, which is open only four days a week. The site cost $1,500 to start; hosting and upkeep runs $100 a month. Brough spends two days a week responding to inquiries and maintaining the site. “The Web has done wonders for us,” he says. “Looking back, if we had started earlier, it would have only been better.”
The power of customization
Another way to create a unique niche is to provide customers with a simple, fast way to customize products. One family company that has done this successfully is Myron Manufacturing in Maywood, New Jersey, a $100 million manufacturer of corporate promotional items such as pens, coffee mugs, and date books. The company’s e-commerce site was launched in October, after two years of using a billboard site that required customers to order by e-mail. The new interactive site has a huge inventory of products, with lots of photos, and lets customers inscribe their company’s name on a model item and view it on their computer screen, providing instant gratification and visual assurance that the product is what they want.
“The most important thing for us was creating a site that really good marketing people could use and take to another level in order to generate a lot of new business,” says Saul Kravecas, executive vice president of Myron, a company started by his father-in-law, Mike Adler. The company wanted a Web site that would make ordering simpler for the customer, and handling orders easier for its employees, who otherwise spend a lot of time on the phone. Customers and potential customers are given codes that they can enter on the Web site to access their own company information and ordering history. A high level of customization can be included in all online orders, minimizing one-on-one phone time.
Kravecas, the man behind Myron’s online presence, says he was willing to pay what it took to create a site that met all his needs and displayed the company’s large selection of promotional products. The company spent more than $300,000 to create its site, with 70 percent of that going to an outside Web development firm. “And I bet we’ll spend that again in the year 2000,” says Kravecas, noting that he has since brought the entire e-commerce operation in-house and hired three people to run it. “But at some point we expect it to generate big rewards,” he says.
How big? In two years, Kravecas says it is reasonable to project that a quarter of all sales will come from e-commerce. During the last quarter of 1999, after the site went up, he says it generated a thousand-fold increase in sales compared with the old site, which required an e-mail or fax order.
Kravecas points out that it’s important to do your homework when choosing an outside firm to help your company develop or host a Web site. “We did not do adequate research, and the whole thing cost more than it probably should have,” he says. Specifically, Kravecas says management should lay out their needs and design requirements in detail before starting to shop for an outside firm, even if that means bringing in a consultant for some guidance.
Test or dive in?
Deciding exactly how your company should enter the world of e-commerce is a big question. You can just test the waters, wade in by degrees, or dive in. Both the cost and level of corporate commitment goes up at each stage of a site’s development. There are at least four levels:
Minimal. “The rock-bottom thing you can do is just put up a site with a few images and descriptions of your products, so people can e-mail you if they’re interested,” says Michelle Johnson, a freelance Internet consultant in Boston. This type of “brochure” or “billboard” site can contain quite a bit of information, but not the ability to purchase products online. Such sites can help you determine if there is demand for your products from online customers. All three companies in this article started this way.
Basic e-commerce. If you want to start selling your products on the Web right away, a quick option is to hook up with an online shopping mall that hosts many commercial sites. A host such as Yahoo!Store (www.store .yahoo.com) can have your site up and running in a day at a monthly cost of under $100. (Several similar hosting sites are listed below.) These sites are inexpensive, but are pre-formatted and don’t give you customized features or much control.
Custom e-commerce. Some businesses evolve quickly to this level as their billboard site shows them the needs of their customers are very specific or as their e-commerce interactions get more complex. Others need a sophisticated or customized site from the beginning.
There are two ways to create a custom e-commerce site. You can buy a software program that takes you step-by-step through the process (many are available for well under $1,000). This can be a good approach if you have someone who is computer literate to do it and maintain the site, and who has some sense of design, says consultant Michelle Johnson. The second option is to hire a Web development firm to build your site with you. Expect to spend at least $2,000 for a basic site. More complicated sites can cost in excess of $10,000, or much more. Once built, these sites can be loaded onto an existing Internet-service-provider company that in most cases will handle hosting and transactions for well under $500 a month.
Do it yourself. The Antisdels developed their own site because they wanted to try it. David Brough did his family’s site himself to minimize the cost. Saul Kravecas at Myron Manufacturing felt he needed a complex, interactive site and so decided to do a fully customized job on his own, including hosting the site and handling all transactions in-house. This advanced level may cost six figures a year, but can be well worth it. “The real question is what is the level of investment vis-à-vis the expected payback,” says Geoffrey Bock of the Patricia Seybold Group.
Market it and they will come
No level of e-commerce site works if people can’t find you. Add the site’s Web address to all your company materials. Make bright stickers with the address that can be pasted on existing materials such as shipping boxes. Above all else, send a letter promoting the virtues of your new Web site to all your existing customers and prospects.
Saul Kravecas suggests using such a letter as an opportunity to make a special offer to customers: “You take a traditional marketing piece and adapt it to say, ‘Here’s a product at a special price. Buy it, or go to our Web site and get an even better deal’—either a better price or an enhancement.”
To increase traffic, he also suggests making “linking” agreements with related businesses that have Web pages. Each site provides a link to the other, so viewers of one site can jump to the other with a simple click. A site for a hardware store, for example, might link to a lumber yard or a paint store. To establish such links, you have to contact the businesses with sites that you’re interested in and negotiate the terms and technical details.
Shane Antisdel notes it is important to register your site with the various search engines, such as Yahoo!, AltaVista, or Lycos, so Web surfers can find you (see, “Building and running your site,” below). Since there were few sites selling furniture when furniturefind.com started, plenty of people found it when doing a search on one of the search engines. The company also took out some banner advertising (ads on other Web sites), and developed an e-mailing list of people who came to the site to keep them informed about new special offers.
Once people start coming, you have to give them a reason to come back. Keep your site fresh, with regularly updated content, product information, contests, or games. If people see they might find something new on their next visit, they are more likely to return to find out what it is.
Stephen J. Simurda is a freelance writer in Williamsburg, MA, and a regular contributor to Family Business.
Finding good advice about e-commerce
Business 2.0 The biggest magazine with a how-to approach to e-commerce. Available on most newsstands, or through www.business2.com.
e-shock: The Electronic Shopping Revolution: Strategies for Retailers and Manufacturers by Michael de Kare-Silver (Amacom Books, 1999). Sound advice and exercises that help owners figure whether they should sell on the Web, and how. (The author was interviewed in the Autumn 1999 issue of Family Business.)
The Industry Standard A magazine that covers the companies and business models driving the Internet economy; for the online version, go to www.thestandard.com.
www.creativegood.com For insight into avoiding e-commerce mistakes; this site reports on results of a survey of the top 10 e-commerce retailers and what kinds of problems customers have with them.
www.wilsonweb.com Offers ideas on how to improve Web marketing.
www.uswebcks.com The site of a successful Web development company; look for the white papers prepared by the firm, including “Four Ways to Survive and Thrive in the Digital Economy” and “Strategies for Growing Your Business Through E-Commerce.”
The Clickable Corporation A book from consultancy Arthur Andersen (The Free Press, 1999) gives strategies for “capturing the Internet advantage.”
Inc. The magazine’s Sept. 15, 1998, special issue covers many practical e-commerce considerations.
Fortune The magazine’s Dec. 7, 1998, special issue takes a thorough look at business on the Internet.
Building and running your site
A number of Web sites and software packages enable you to do everything from building your own Web page to creating an entire e-commerce site. Go to software stores or look for product reviews in the many Web magazines available at most newsstands. A few sample products:
ImageCafe.com Lets you choose a Web site from various templates and customize it somewhat to your firm’s use, for $300 to $700. ImageCafe will maintain the site for $9.95 a month.
Home Page Creator An IBM service that lets you post up to 500 items for sale and conduct secure credit-card transactions, from $29.95 a month on up.
Brio PC From Hewlett-Packard, an Internet-only computer that comes with software that lets you design a Web site and storefront and begin selling online. As low as $649.
Complete Web Studio 2.0 From Sierra Home, a software package that lets you create a site and put it online with simple point-and-click steps. Comes with more than 37,000 graphics, photos, backgrounds, animations, and page templates. $79.95.
Getting listed on search engines
Register your site To register your site with search engines, go to http://submitit.linkexchange.com.
Maximize visibility For information on how to maximize your visibility to search engines, go to www.search enginewatch.com/webmasters/intro.html.
Customer communication
Constant Contact Keeping in touch with your customers is important in e-commerce, just as in traditional business. A program called Constant Contact (Roving Software, 781-444-6160) creates a button on your site that lets customers sign up for automatic e-mail messages that alert them to changes on your site or new product introductions.
Test your site
Want to test your creation? Try www.vrroom.com. The site’s owners recruit “virtual evaluation shoppers” to make supposed purchases at your site and give feedback on how the process went.
Choosing an ISPSelecting an Internet service provider (ISP) to host your Web site is akin to choosing a business partner. You need a firm that is reliable (has very little downtime) and can provide you with a range of financial services (chief among these the ability to accept credit-card orders).
Shane Antisdel of Bookout Furniture in Niles, Michigan, started by asking people about the Internet service providers they used, and looked at their sites. “From there it was kind of like interviewing someone for a job,” he says. He wanted a provider with whom he could communicate easily. He called each provider and spoke with a representative at length, noting how easy or hard it was to get the person, and how responsive he or she was to his questions and needs.
For basic sites a local ISP may be sufficient. All of them will host your site and most can build sites for you for a price. But you don’t have to work with an ISP that is geographically close to you. Some larger ISPs are listed below. To check out them and others, go to www.dslreports.com/r3/dsl, which provides reviews of ISPs.
www.ibm.com/ebusiness
www.netscape.com/netcenter/smallbusiness/onlineessentials
www.aitcom.net
www.inex.com
www.store.yahoo.com
www.icat.com
www.mindspring.com
www.ibill.com
www.verio.com
www.9netave.net
www.interland.net
— S.S.