The stars aligned
Someone was asking me the other day what the formula was that had caused Sticks and Stones to take off like it did. I hadn’t really thought in depth about it, so my answer was “let me get back with you when I have time to think.” As I started pondering, I came to the realization there have been many different things all working together. While we could have still made a viable business without one or two of these things, we’d be much smaller and what has transpired in three years would have taken ten!
Here are the things that have caused the "stars to align" in our favor....
Sales experience
The first thing is Jera and I both had years of sales experience and personalities that are conducive to selling. This was crucial when it came to representing our company and our products to other people, especially decision-makers in the national media outlets. Some people were given analytical skills, some are nurturing, some have never-ending attention spans and can focus for hours at a time. We were born for sales and marketing. A friend once said to me, “there are thousands of products that never made it off the basement shelf, simply because there was no one to sell them.” We weren’t about to let that happen.
Thinking globally
We also had both worked for companies that either had a global presence (the largest in the industry in my case) or had a global customer base (in Jera’s case). This was important because we realized it’s a big world out there. Had we worked for businesses that were locally operated with a local customer base, it would be much more difficult to envision our product in O Magazine, People, Entrepreneur, etc. Just having that more global outlook was an incredible positive for us. We never saw ourselves becoming “weekend warriors” – people who work all week and then spend their weekends at craft fairs. That is a tough way to make it, as you rarely make up the cost of time and booth fees, plus we valued our relaxation and family time. We also want a basic footprint in boutiques and gift stores, but we knew the business they could offer would be very small simply based on their foot traffic. Today, even with 60 stores, we reach more customers online in a single day than we reach in a week in all of our stores combined. Where would you put your efforts? We also got a really nice response from our local newspaper early on, but again, after a couple days we were old news. So, we went on to the next step…
Blitzing the national media
We set out a plan to blitz the national marketplace in order to set up significant roadblocks for the competition that would surely follow once we started appearing on television and in magazines. To date, I don’t believe there is a stone left unturned in national (millions of readers or viewers) outlets. Because of that, 95% of our customers come directly to the website via our URL rather than a Google search. While we still get a small amount of Google searches daily, it is our presence in the national print and internet media that gets customers to bypass search engines and come right to the website.
Knowing the importance of branding
I mentioned this in an earlier blog, but I’ll point out some really extreme examples of brand development, and you can reduce that down to our little industry. Tissue paper: Kleenex, Inline skates: Rollerblades, Online search: Google, Photocopy: Xerox, Mp3 players: iPod. All of these industries have competitors, but their brands are so powerful they’ve become part of the lexicon. We knew it was crucial to get our brand built early on, and we weren’t willing to compromise the future by making decisions that might make money in the short run but ultimately would dilute our brand effectiveness long term. Had we not had the foresight and concern for branding from the outset, we might be selling $.25 photographs for $5 a pop and shipping them to you in an envelope rather than completed custom-framed personalized keepsakes that are pieces of art and family heirlooms.
Managerial and Leadership background
I was fortunate enough to have years of managerial and leadership experience, which has been really important since we grew to having a number of employees. Learning to deal with different personalities, to set up incentives to motivate specific performance, to look at financial statements and make business decisions based on those statements – all these are acquired skills that I had in my pocket from my days in the corporate world.
Customer service background
Coming from a corporate environment where the customer is always right made the transition to running our own company easy, as we keep the same philosophy at Sticks and Stones. We knew if the owners of the company harbored that philosophy, it couldn’t help but trickle down.
Internet background
Jera worked selling internet advertising and email campaigns starting in 1998, so she was at the forefront of the movement. She also saw the downward trends in both over time. Her knowledge of that industry has saved us thousands of dollars in advertising, as we hardly bother spending on unprofitable pay-per-click (except on our own pages and to keep track of a few others) or buying email lists (a complete waste of money since the clickthrough rates are less than 0.1% these days). We’d never have known that had we not had years of exposure to that industry. When you sell it for a living, you get to see it go into the tank firsthand! And don’t get me started on banner ads…
Having cash for growth
That is something we were very fortunate to have, as we have spent a ton of money simply to grow and to get through the lean times – building, maintaining, and upgrading the website is expensive. Purchasing enough materials to have on hand for customer orders has a cost to it. Paying salaries, rents, and other overhead all costs money, and we weren’t profitable for the first 18 months, so having enough put away to cover all of these necessities was such a blessing.
Having a mentor in the custom framing business
I can’t stress the importance of this to our business success. My friend who owns a very successful custom frame shop has been a cauldron of knowledge. Early on, he was willing to take a smaller profit because he believed in our growth, rather than trying to make his money while he could. When he realized we were outgrowing his shop, rather than getting greedy, he focused on exactly what he does best – make custom frames for people. He not only allowed me to strike out on my own, he encouraged and taught us. Today, he still makes all of our wood frames, and he is able to focus on his strength while making a solid revenue from ours. It’s a win-win.
Having a fantastic programmer on staff
Again, another situation where the stars were aligned. We have one of the best programmers around at our fingertips. You can read about him in an earlier blog, but basically he and Jera have worked together since about 2002. There is a trust that exists between us that is imperative when working with someone so intimately involved in the creation of our “store” in cyberspace. Most people either have a brother-in-law that “dabbles” in programming or they have to bid out their jobs. In our case, Cristian Hotescu was available what seemed to be every hour of the day, 7 days a week early on. He is also extremely talented and knowledgeable in his field.
Not having to go to another job
We were extremely blessed to be able to own our company before Sticks and Stones came along, and we were both full-time employees of the company. That meant we got to set our own schedule, and we both had the time to devote to growing Sticks and Stones when we needed it. I used to have every toll free call come into my cell phone, I answered every email, and one of us would run packages down to the packaging company we used at the time. I can’t imagine trying to run a professional business while working for someone else. It would be almost impossible to justify handling your side business with an employer during the workday, and customer service would suffer.
Last, and probably most important…faith in God
There were stretches early on in our marriage and lives where we had financial and professional success and believed we were self-made. We believed in God but never really cared about living a lifestyle that reflected that belief. God showed us how wrong we had been, as we went through some very scary times. Relatively speaking, we never had to break into any long-term savings, which was a small miracle. However, we saw a number of months where outflows exceeded income, and watching the bank account going backwards to start a business is unsettling. Through it all, we had many signs and answers to prayer that said “keep moving, you’re going in the right direction.” I know many times God will allow a person to go through adversity to get their attention. We were so lucky it wasn’t health-related, as that would be so much harder to handle. However, He got our attention in a big way, and He’s continued to provide for us as we’ve continued to be faithful. I can't imagine trying to run a business without our divine "business partner"!
That’s it, in a nutshell. Thanks for reading all the way through. There are so many exciting things on the horizon that we aren’t even able to talk about yet. Look for our personalized alphabet keepsakes to continue appearing national publications throughout the year, and please subscribe to our blog if you haven’t yet. You’ll get an email every time it is updated.
Here are the things that have caused the "stars to align" in our favor....
Sales experience
The first thing is Jera and I both had years of sales experience and personalities that are conducive to selling. This was crucial when it came to representing our company and our products to other people, especially decision-makers in the national media outlets. Some people were given analytical skills, some are nurturing, some have never-ending attention spans and can focus for hours at a time. We were born for sales and marketing. A friend once said to me, “there are thousands of products that never made it off the basement shelf, simply because there was no one to sell them.” We weren’t about to let that happen.
Thinking globally
We also had both worked for companies that either had a global presence (the largest in the industry in my case) or had a global customer base (in Jera’s case). This was important because we realized it’s a big world out there. Had we worked for businesses that were locally operated with a local customer base, it would be much more difficult to envision our product in O Magazine, People, Entrepreneur, etc. Just having that more global outlook was an incredible positive for us. We never saw ourselves becoming “weekend warriors” – people who work all week and then spend their weekends at craft fairs. That is a tough way to make it, as you rarely make up the cost of time and booth fees, plus we valued our relaxation and family time. We also want a basic footprint in boutiques and gift stores, but we knew the business they could offer would be very small simply based on their foot traffic. Today, even with 60 stores, we reach more customers online in a single day than we reach in a week in all of our stores combined. Where would you put your efforts? We also got a really nice response from our local newspaper early on, but again, after a couple days we were old news. So, we went on to the next step…
Blitzing the national media
We set out a plan to blitz the national marketplace in order to set up significant roadblocks for the competition that would surely follow once we started appearing on television and in magazines. To date, I don’t believe there is a stone left unturned in national (millions of readers or viewers) outlets. Because of that, 95% of our customers come directly to the website via our URL rather than a Google search. While we still get a small amount of Google searches daily, it is our presence in the national print and internet media that gets customers to bypass search engines and come right to the website.
Knowing the importance of branding
I mentioned this in an earlier blog, but I’ll point out some really extreme examples of brand development, and you can reduce that down to our little industry. Tissue paper: Kleenex, Inline skates: Rollerblades, Online search: Google, Photocopy: Xerox, Mp3 players: iPod. All of these industries have competitors, but their brands are so powerful they’ve become part of the lexicon. We knew it was crucial to get our brand built early on, and we weren’t willing to compromise the future by making decisions that might make money in the short run but ultimately would dilute our brand effectiveness long term. Had we not had the foresight and concern for branding from the outset, we might be selling $.25 photographs for $5 a pop and shipping them to you in an envelope rather than completed custom-framed personalized keepsakes that are pieces of art and family heirlooms.
Managerial and Leadership background
I was fortunate enough to have years of managerial and leadership experience, which has been really important since we grew to having a number of employees. Learning to deal with different personalities, to set up incentives to motivate specific performance, to look at financial statements and make business decisions based on those statements – all these are acquired skills that I had in my pocket from my days in the corporate world.
Customer service background
Coming from a corporate environment where the customer is always right made the transition to running our own company easy, as we keep the same philosophy at Sticks and Stones. We knew if the owners of the company harbored that philosophy, it couldn’t help but trickle down.
Internet background
Jera worked selling internet advertising and email campaigns starting in 1998, so she was at the forefront of the movement. She also saw the downward trends in both over time. Her knowledge of that industry has saved us thousands of dollars in advertising, as we hardly bother spending on unprofitable pay-per-click (except on our own pages and to keep track of a few others) or buying email lists (a complete waste of money since the clickthrough rates are less than 0.1% these days). We’d never have known that had we not had years of exposure to that industry. When you sell it for a living, you get to see it go into the tank firsthand! And don’t get me started on banner ads…
Having cash for growth
That is something we were very fortunate to have, as we have spent a ton of money simply to grow and to get through the lean times – building, maintaining, and upgrading the website is expensive. Purchasing enough materials to have on hand for customer orders has a cost to it. Paying salaries, rents, and other overhead all costs money, and we weren’t profitable for the first 18 months, so having enough put away to cover all of these necessities was such a blessing.
Having a mentor in the custom framing business
I can’t stress the importance of this to our business success. My friend who owns a very successful custom frame shop has been a cauldron of knowledge. Early on, he was willing to take a smaller profit because he believed in our growth, rather than trying to make his money while he could. When he realized we were outgrowing his shop, rather than getting greedy, he focused on exactly what he does best – make custom frames for people. He not only allowed me to strike out on my own, he encouraged and taught us. Today, he still makes all of our wood frames, and he is able to focus on his strength while making a solid revenue from ours. It’s a win-win.
Having a fantastic programmer on staff
Again, another situation where the stars were aligned. We have one of the best programmers around at our fingertips. You can read about him in an earlier blog, but basically he and Jera have worked together since about 2002. There is a trust that exists between us that is imperative when working with someone so intimately involved in the creation of our “store” in cyberspace. Most people either have a brother-in-law that “dabbles” in programming or they have to bid out their jobs. In our case, Cristian Hotescu was available what seemed to be every hour of the day, 7 days a week early on. He is also extremely talented and knowledgeable in his field.
Not having to go to another job
We were extremely blessed to be able to own our company before Sticks and Stones came along, and we were both full-time employees of the company. That meant we got to set our own schedule, and we both had the time to devote to growing Sticks and Stones when we needed it. I used to have every toll free call come into my cell phone, I answered every email, and one of us would run packages down to the packaging company we used at the time. I can’t imagine trying to run a professional business while working for someone else. It would be almost impossible to justify handling your side business with an employer during the workday, and customer service would suffer.
Last, and probably most important…faith in God
There were stretches early on in our marriage and lives where we had financial and professional success and believed we were self-made. We believed in God but never really cared about living a lifestyle that reflected that belief. God showed us how wrong we had been, as we went through some very scary times. Relatively speaking, we never had to break into any long-term savings, which was a small miracle. However, we saw a number of months where outflows exceeded income, and watching the bank account going backwards to start a business is unsettling. Through it all, we had many signs and answers to prayer that said “keep moving, you’re going in the right direction.” I know many times God will allow a person to go through adversity to get their attention. We were so lucky it wasn’t health-related, as that would be so much harder to handle. However, He got our attention in a big way, and He’s continued to provide for us as we’ve continued to be faithful. I can't imagine trying to run a business without our divine "business partner"!
That’s it, in a nutshell. Thanks for reading all the way through. There are so many exciting things on the horizon that we aren’t even able to talk about yet. Look for our personalized alphabet keepsakes to continue appearing national publications throughout the year, and please subscribe to our blog if you haven’t yet. You’ll get an email every time it is updated.
posted by Sticks and Stones @ 6:43 PM
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