Our story begins with my wife, and her obsession with sandals.... We were on vacation to Aspen during the summer, and she brought a sandal for every outfit, location,etc... I had to lug this crazy suitcase full of her sandals across the Houston airport for a connecting flight that we were late for. After boarding the plane(and almost missing it!), I told her this was madness bringing all these sandals.
While on the airplane, she sketched out her concept for our interchangeable sandals on a cocktail napkin. Years later, here we are selling her brand of sandals. Being in the clothing industry, it was easy for us to find a manufacturer to create our product. We sourced Taiwan, they have great quality control. Next, was getting a great website up and running. We started with Volusion for a few years, then one day we met Daymond John ( of Shark Tank fame/ FUBU)in Miami, he suggested that we get with Shopify. He was so very successful, we knew right there it was time to make the switch.
Since we switched over to Shopify, business has never been better of us online. We have done in 3 months on Shopify, what we did all year on our old website!
Shopify works people!!
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
We are traditionally a wholesale company, selling our sandals to Boutiques, Salons, and Spas throughout the United States, and Canada. We decided that starting a retail website would be so beneficial to our company, it has helped us tremendously!
It helps us especially during holidays, and peak summer months since sandals are most in demand at those times.
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
We use Square to run our sales through. It was the easiest choice, once we looked around at all the other companies doing similar applications. Plus it works wonderfully when we are away from our office doing wholesale/ retail trade shows. It comes with you everywhere!
As far as fulfillment, we handle that internally, I only trust family to handle this part of the company
When using Shopify, I coordinate it with USPS priority mail for fast, effective shipping, larger orders go through FedEx Ground.
What are your top recommendations for new ecommerce entrepreneurs?
As a new store owner, I recommend using smaller companies, family run companies even, when you can. They will work harder, and go the extra mile to give you great customer service, and reliability.
Plus being a smaller company myself , I feel we would not have gotten as far as we have without people taking a chance on us!