Counter De Energy Drinks!

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The store counters are coming along- everything always takes longer than we think it will. We were hoping to have the counters done by the end of last week. Today (Friday) is the end of this week and they still aren’t finished. No sweat though. We spent a good month just trying to figure out what kind of counters we wanted so there’s obviously no hurry. Word of the constuction is spreading… soon the customers will come.  And they will not be able to touch anything!

The other day I was packing some orders and I turned my head and noticed everyone had an energy drink on their desk (some people had more than one). Go ahead- count them up. I don’t drink them, but apparently they keep me in business by providing energy to my people. Thank you Coca Cola.

Interview

Jake’s Wife, Megan, asked me to answer a few questions for her business class. I thought I’d post the questions and my answers here (you know, since it’s commerce stuff!).

-Cam

1. You

Name: Cameron Hughes
Age: 30
Hometown: Lehi, UT
Education: (high school and college) Meridian High School (graduated in ’96). Attended BYU- three classes short of graduating when I decided to, for lack of a better word, “bail”.

Q. What did you graduate in?
A. I would have graduated in English. My plan was to attend Law School and practice law with my father. During my first pre law course I realized my plan wasn’t going to work out (I hated law).

Q. Did this major have anything to do with starting a business? Was it helpful and in what ways?
A. Not really- English and knife retail share very few commonalities. But yes, the English background was very helpful. Website content is extremely important and the English background gave me an edge in regard to what was readable, clear and engaging.

Q. Do you have any relatives who are entrepreneurs, and did they have an influence on your business?
A. Not a one!

Q. Did you have any other role models or mentors?
A. A friend of my wife’s family runs a business online selling model (i.e. cars and planes). I thought to myself, “If he can do it, then I can do it.” I talk with him from time to time to get business advice. Most of my inspiration comes from INC magazine- there are some excellent contributors that I admire a great deal.

Q. Did you have any business or self-employment experiences when you were young? How important were those experiences to starting your own business?
A. I was always into something. I was always trying to start some kind of business. Mowing lawns, babysitting, painting. I used to haul my sister’s toys down to the corner by our house and sell them to the neighborhood kids. I was big into eBay too (not so much anymore). All these experiences might be classified as “cute” now, but they really drove home the idea that it’s hard to work to start and run a business.

2. Your Business

Q. How did you spot the opportunity to sell knives, and how did it develop?
A. Originally I just collected knives. I found a couple of good sources to buy them and I’d get a dozen at a time. I could sell eleven on eBay and make enough so that I could keep the last one without being out anything. Pretty soon I was making enough extra that I acquired a small inventory and decided to build a retail website.

Q. What were your goals when you started? Did you picture being where you are today?
A. Originally I was just excited by the idea of having a piece of the Internet pie. It seemed incredible that I could pop something online and someone would buy it. Selling knives online seemed like a fad that I was lucky enough to stumble on. But after awhile I realized that what we had was a viable business and my goal shifted to growth. “How big can it get?” was the question foremost on my mind. I never imagined for a moment it would be anything like the business we have today.

Q. How did you evaluate the opportunity in terms of the financial requirements and income potential?
A. It didn’t take much to officially start the company so risk wasn’t a big factor. As long as we made more than we put in things were fine by me. Initially we didn’t take anything out of the business for ourselves- any profit was put back in to facilitate growth.

Q. How much capital did it take?
A. I borrowed $2000 from myself to get “a lot” of inventory.

Q. How long did it take to reach a positive cash flow and break even sales volume?
A. Our only expenses were advertising, website hosting and growth costs (buy more than you sell). We had these costs covered a month after our website launched.

Q. How did you finance your business? Did you use your own savings, family and friends, angels, banks, bootstrapping?
A. I used our personal savings. My wife was horrified. Since then we have used the bootstrapping technique.

Q. What are some pressures or crisis your business survived in the early periods of it?
A. There was a period early on where I had hired my first three employees and I thought I could let them run the business so I didn’t pay enough attention to the day to day operations. Sales suffered, cash flow became critical and I had to lay everyone off. I ran the entire business by myself for three months. It was pure hell.

Q. What was your family situation?
A. When I started the business it was just me and my wife. By the time the business could actually support us we had our first child. The crisis happened right around the same time as our second child came (stressful!). We have a third child now and sometimes I worry I’m not spending enough time with everyone. The business often demands more of me than I’d like to give.

Q. Did you find or have partners? Are there any attributes among partners or advisers that you would definitely try to avoid?
A. Originally I had a partner. Everything was supposed to be shared 50/50, but I ended up doing most of the work and eventually bought out his half of the company. As much as I hate to say it, try and avoid a partner if you can. If you are going to have a partner make sure it’s someone you can trust the way you would trust yourself. Advisors are fine, as long as they have your interest in mind. Too many of them, in my experience, have hidden agendas.

Q. Did you have a start-up business plan? If so, what were the basics of it?
A. Originally no. But once we realized we had a “real” business we did map out a basic strategy. It went something like, “Be the best, offer the most comprehensive product selection, offer the lowest price, offer the best service, provide the most enjoyable website shopping experience possible. Always buy products we think we can sell, always sell more more than we get them, take into account hidden expenses, do what’s best for the business.”

Q. What was your most triumphant/exciting moment? Your worst moment?
A.The most exiting thing that I can remember was the first time we broke a million in sales in one year (I think it was 2005). I think it will actually be more exiting to launch our physical retail store (next month) but I don’t know yet. The worst moment was working by myself (a long three month moment) and wondering if things were going to get better.

Q. What were the most difficult gaps to fill and problems to solve as you began to grow?
A. Order fulfillment was the biggest problem initially. Getting the product from our shop to the customer was an epic uphill battle. Hiring employees was pretty difficult (and we’ve hired some bad ones in our day) as well. The bigger we got the harder it became to assign roles to and manage everything (I’m a bit of a micro manager). The biggest problem we have right now is stock- we don’t have an effective enough way to manage inventory reordering.

Q. What are your plans for the future? Expand, Maintain, Harvest?
A. For the time being the focus in on getting thing running smoothly and continued expansion (like our retail store- into the local market we go!). My feeling is that if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backward. We have a slew of new websites we want to launch and the future looks bright.

Q. Have your goals for the business changed? How?
A. I have higher expectations for it than I did in the past. I think it’s capable of more so my goals are a little more ambitious in regard to growth, sales and product selection.

Q. Have your personal goals in life changed? How?
A. I don’t think my personal goals have really changed.

A. What do you consider your most valuable asset(s)–the things that enabled you to succeed?
Q. Relentless determination, hard work and a little bit of hardheaded ego get the business off the ground. But ultimately it’s having the right people by your side that determines if you’re going to succeed or not. A business operation is seldom a one man show.

Q. If you had to do it over again, would you do it again in the same way?
A. I honestly don’t know. Everything we did – good and bad- got us to this point. If I could go back in time and just do the good stuff I suppose I would, but ultimately (and I know this is a big cliché) the mistakes I’ve made have been a valuable help.

Q. What do you feel are the most critical concepts, skills, attitudes, and know-how you needed to get your company started and grow to where it is today? What will be needed in the next 5 years?
A. Well, the things I mentioned above. Also making sure everyone in a business is getting along is very important. We had one employee awhile back and he infected everyone with his depressive attitude- if the people in the business aren’t happy then the business isn’t happy. When it comes to business I get most of my know how from business books and magazines. Also, I reply heavily on the input of everyone here at work- if we make decisions as a group they are generally better (two heads are better than one). I’m not thinking five years ahead yet…

Q. What things do you find personally rewarding and satisfying as an entrepreneur? What have been the rewards, risks, and tradeoffs?
A. When I sit in the store look around it’s exciting to see my vision coming to life. It’s very rewarding when customers are happy or compliment the store, selection, service and staff. Building a business is kind of like playing with big Lego blocks. But not a day goes by without thoughts like, “What am I doing?” or “Is this really going to work?” There’s a lot of responsibility that rests on my shoulders and I’m not always comfortable with that. As I mentioned earlier sometimes I wonder if I’m home enough- I don’t want to sacrifice my family for the sake of “success.”

Q. Who should try to be an entrepreneur? And who should not?
A. I used to think anyone could do it. I don’t want to sound egotistical, but I don’t believe that anymore. If someone has a passion for something, if they are dedicated to it and have the means to make it in to a business they should give it a shot. But they need to be honest with themselves- if they can’t do it they should call it quits before it becomes a financial liability or an emotional black hole. There aren’t any rules about who should be and who shouldn’t be and entrepreneur.

Q. What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur? Could you suggest the three most important lessons you have learned?
A. Do something you like. If you enjoy your work you’re much more likely to success. Also surround yourself with the right people.
Lessons learned:
1) Work hard (and work smart).
2) Do what’s best for the business, not yourself (if everyone takes care of the business then the business can take care of everyone).
3) Hire people who are better than you. Put your ego aside and get the right people for the job.

Q. Would you be willing to be on an advisory committee for my business?
A. But of course. Make sure I don’t have a hidden agenda though!

A Brief Overview and Welcome

This is my first post! It’s actually just the content from the “About Cam” page but I’ve ingeniously used it again here as a blog entry. Allow me to welcome you to my newest blogging venture: Cam on Commerce. I’m your host, Cam. I’ll be talking about- you guessed it (and if you didn’t then you may want to bail here)- Commerce!

I’m using this website as a venue to collect innformation I hope to use in a book one day.  At this point the book doesn’t have a name or anything fancy like that. I’ll frequently make references to the “book” so you have to pretend that what you’re reading is printed material (and you you want to print out this blog you have my blessing).

Feel free to send me questions about ecommerce subjects- I’ll do a Q&A section for some posts (and then cleverly work the into my book to create the illusion of substance!). So, without further ado, let the “book” begin.

First things first: I want everyone to know who this book is for. Far too often people pick up a book and they scan page after page desperately hoping the book can help them. They buy the book, they read it, and discover that they are not the book’s intended audience (It turns out “Asymmetric Cellular Division” wasn’t about why AT&T and Cingular sucked).

This book is for anyone who has any interest in ecommerce (specifically geared toward smaller private endeavors- not things like Amazon). You may be curious about what running an ecommerce website entails. It may be your first time setting up a commerce oriented website or it may be your second or third (indicating you need this book). You may already be successfully running an ecommerce website (you still need this book, dammit). You may have a brick and mortar store and be considering and Internet presence. Again, it’s for anyone with any type of entrepreneurial ecommerce itch (not to be confused with a tick bite).

I try to cover anything relevant to small scale ecommerce. I start at the beginning with “the urge” (which is the initial idea that eats at you until you do something about it). We move onto product or service selection and competitive advantage. We work through creating an identity, building a website, creating a fulfillment framework and then cover advertising and website traffic. Finally we talk about what to do if success hits, what to do if success is MIA and touch on growth strategies and exit strategies. If this sounds dull go find yourself a comic with some pictures.

So what makes me qualified to talk about any of this? I have a computer, some spare time and can type pretty darn fast with only two fingers. Also, for the last five years I’ve been involved with the development of ecommerce software and I’ve started several websites (using that software) that are now multimillion dollar companies. I don’t mean to toot my own horn but if my claim to fame was that I’d spent the last five years eating oatmeal in a sensory deprivation chamber to achieve inner peace I might be the wrong guy to listen to. Toot toot.

About Me:

My name is on the front of this book. I’m not so self centered that it needs to be repeated here (after all it’s on the front cover of this book! Just getting myself psyched up- remember I said this was going to be a book). I’ve been programming since I was fourteen. Unfortunately I can’t program any better now. Luckily this book isn’t about programming, it’s about commerce, specifically ecommerce. I’ve been involved in commerce since I was seven years old. How about that?

My grandmother used to operate a health food store. For some reason I thought if I drew pictures of Grimace, the purple McDonald’s character of years past, hiding in the forest people would want to buy them. I put them for sale in the health food store. No takers. Not much later I got a copy of Print Shop for the Apple IIe and tried my hand at designing birthday cards. Nope. So I began printing out signs advertising my willingness to mow lawns for spare change. Nothing. Weeding? No. Babysitting? Nada. It wasn’t until I began hauling my sister’s toys down to the street corner and selling them to kids who were coming back from school that I found my calling. Retail.

EBay was thrilling for me. From the moment I learned of its existence I was an avid user and proponent. This was my first real experience with ecommerce. I sold anything I could get my hands on and became quite obsessed with the whole idea of Internet retailing. I decided at the early age of fifteen that my destiny involved some type of ecommerce retail business. I used eBay for years until one day I read something about webstore technology. How wonderful! I could bypass eBay, the seller fees, the non-paying bidders, the lack of control in my listings. I enlisted the help of a good friend and we created our first website for selling pocket knives (sell what you know).

Our original website was incredibly basic- we could showcase items and people could add them to a cart a checkout. We kept track of orders on a spread sheet and everything was a wonderful mess. We spent a considerable amount of time looking for more powerful ecommerce software but really didn’t have any luck. And then it hit us! We would build our own ecommerce solution and our website could be the perfect testing ground. People who actually used the ecommerce software they designed to run a retail Internet store! What a novel idea.

Past its Prime Meridian

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Meridian School. I don’t really know where to begin and I don’t want to ramble on (I’m not feeling very eloquent at the moment) so I’ll make this short and sweet.

On the 24th of May we visited the school building before it was torn down. In many ways visiting the building was like attending an open casket viewing. The body is not what defined the person, much like the building is not what defined the school. But it’s the last tangible thing that remains, and so it is to that shell that we say goodbye.

It was nice to be able to visit the old classrooms one last time and reminisce about all of our experiences there. Much about the school was still the same as I remember it, but many other things had changed and the school was in s state of disrepair. Each time I drive along 900 East in Provo I’m sure I’ll feel a little sad when I don’t see the old school building, but it was time for it go.

I’m glad I had the chance to attend the school in, what I would consider, its prime. I made friends I still have. I met my future (and current) wife. And I got a “real” education to boot. I often think back to my time spent at Meridian and I can’t help but smile.

And yes- I edited Andrew into the picture on the left. He was MIA when the picture was taken but he deserves to be in it.

Park City Street Fighting, Goodbye!

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Recently Fran and I hit Park city for a little time to ourselves (no kids- thank you Nelly!) We stayed at the Hotel Park City. The accommodations were much nicer than I was expecting and the room decoration and feel were outstanding.  We had dinner at Ruth’s Chris Grill which was also excellent- easily one of the best meals I’ve had all year (caesar salad, ribeye steak, creamed spinach and sauteed mushrooms with a chocolate coffee cheesecake for dessert).

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t on our side and our plans were cut somewhat short. When we got to Park City it was a tolerable 69 degrees but by the time we had finished dinner and headed toward the pool it had become sub 50 degrees and it was raining (when we left the next morning is was 33 degrees and snowing). We’ll have to give it another shot later this year.

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In other news we recently got a Super Street Fighter Arcade machine. I used to play this one at a pizza parlour by my old house in Alpine. Nostalgia aside, it’s still one of my favorite games and I’ve always wanted to own the Arcade. As a kid I always thought it would be fun to have arcade games (I think I got the ideal from Silver Spoons).  Anyway- we got this one for work. Not sure yet if it’s a good thing. It doesn’t do much to engender good will (“This doesn’t block. I can’t block.  What the $#%$!?” “You’re so cheap, stop being such a %$#@!!” and other gems like, “Be someone else. Don’t you know anyone else?  This is lame $@%$!”).

Getting Street Fighter makes me want to assemble a MAME arcade. It would be really cool to have some more games.

And finally, GE is out of the the appliance business. Thank goodness! We have GE appliances in our house- five to be exact. We had to have the compressor replaced in our fridge, we had to have the fan motor replaced in our microwave, the “self clean’ on our ovens is broken, various pieces of our dishwasher have broken off and our gas stove top has ignition problems.  Kind of unreal – five appliances with five problems. No more GE for me

6/23/2017 Update: I guess GE didn’t actually get out of the appliance biz since our new home has almost all GE appliances. And, you guessed it, they have all broken at some point. 

Anyway, got another post coming up soon!

Cam’s Tacoma

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I sold my Tacoma to a coworker. Mechanically the truck was in perfect shape and always served me (us) well. The exterior was starting to show some wear, there were a few interior issues (i.e. the compass had stopped working) and the stereo interface was starting to feel dated (no iPod connection). Having a black vehicle was always a challenge too- they are extremely difficult to keep clean. As soon as I sold the truck I felt a little regret, like I had betrayed a friend. But I know the truck is in good hands now and the new owner will take even better care of it than I did.

It’s always emotional for me when I lose a vehicle. 

I love my Tacoma. This truck has done everything for us and has never complained once. If I recommended a mid-sized truck to anyone it would be the Toyota Tacoma.

My Tacoma is almost totally stock (all options are from the factory). The only upgrades I have done are JDM exhaust and headers.

Bonding with Transformers

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My son, Mike, is obsessed with Transformers. Sometimes he calls me at work to ask me Transformer questions. “Hi Daddy. Hey, can Fortress Maximus beat up Optimus Prime?” We’ve been pulling out my collection and playing with them a few nights each week and Mike is amassing a little collection of his own. He’s watched the movies (both the cartoon and live action offerings) more times than me. All of this delights me.

Recently I decided it was time to start drawing with him. Now, I’m not some kind of super artist or anything, but I think a person should have some basic art skills. I bought us some markers (I recommend Prismacolor  markers- excellent in every way) and we decided to draw some Transformers. Mike picked Bumblebee for our first effort. I tried to teach him about seeing basic shapes in objects. I showed him how to pencil the design, ink and then color. I was thrilled that his little bumble bee drawing had shapes with volume and weren’t just little sticks! I helped him with the outline of his car, but he did all his wheels and windows and his own inking and coloring. We still have a ways to go, but I’m going to do this with him a couple of times a month and save everything in a book for him. I’m sure he’ll get better than me pretty quick.