LampLink – Mary Lu Wason

If I were to be asked for my top two e-commerce tips for small businesses, they would be:

Choose a good niche to allow you to effectively compete against larger companies and
Regardless of your budget limitations, open a Web store as soon as possible and start learning how to sell on the Web.

The LampLink Web store is a great example of these practices in action. It focuses on a very narrow product range – lamp parts – and was opened way back in ’96.

In this interview LampLink’s creator, Mary Lu Wason, shares with us the valuable lessons she has learned through selling on the Web for nearly four years.

Lang: How did you go about building LampLink?

Wason: My husband and I were looking for a product to sell on the web for a few years. In 1996 we thought we were too late, already! Can you believe that? That was the hype at the time, and yet, no one was really buying online yet. Yet there was a mentality that if you were the first one selling a product on the web, you were guaranteed sales.

By chance, while I was decorating my home, I discovered how difficult it is to buy lamp parts at retail. Yes, there are a few standard kits that you think you can find at any hardware store. It’s one of those things, that when you actually need it, you can’t find it anywhere.

I live in New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the US. I figured that if I had a hard time finding items, then someone in more rural areas would find it impossible. It seemed like a good thing to offer on the Net. Besides, I was very busy lamp crafting. I was excited about it. I was creative and I was very, very pregnant. There I was, a programmer, about to take 15 months maternity leave. Running a web site sounded like the perfect thing to do in my spare time. My sister partnered with me and together we thought we could handle it all.

Our first goal was to go online. We accepted checks or money orders only and offered a PO Box and no phone number! Can you believe it? We still got orders. I’m so grateful to those early customers. This was in 1996 when the media’s only Net story was BUYER BEWARE. Our next goal was to accept credit cards. The next to list a phone. The next to hire an order taking service.

Lang: What were the major challenges you faced?

Wason: Finding suppliers that would take us seriously was a huge hurdle. I had to say we were a mail order company. (Actually, I’ve never understood why e-commerce wasn’t recognized from the beginning as mail order with a virtual catalog.)

It was also impossible to predict (or prepare) for what would happen. We spent too much time preparing for things that didn’t happen, too little for what did.

Another strange challenge is that it can sometimes just feel unreal. There is no brick and mortar, most of my work is online with bits and bytes. It was quite sobering for me, when we mailed out the first print catalog. Surrounded by stacks of large envelopes, suddenly, the numbers on the log report became flesh and blood, with real, physical addresses.

I find that it is a bit unreal to family and friends, too. There are lots of challenges to anyone working from home. There are lots of interruptions. Family and friends tend to forget about it in a way that wouldn’t happen if there was a brick and mortar involved.

Lang: Looking at your store now, what aspect are you especially pleased with and what do you feel could have been done better?

Wason: I am so pleased and proud of certain email and phone calls that I get from customers that are so grateful that we are here for them. I’ve had people tell me they searched for years for these products. Those in rural areas often touch me the most. They say we save them many long, discouraging trips into town. When I get letters like that, I feel like I’m providing a service. That’s the way I want to feel. I don’t ever want to feel like I tricked or conned someone into believing they need our products. I just want them to find us, when they already know they need us.

What could have been done better? Just about everything! But I can’t let myself get hung up about that. I am just happy that each step was taken, no matter how imperfect, each task accomplished, brought LampLink forward.

It’s been said, there are no mistakes, there are lessons learned. I don’t know what lessons I can share with your readers. I think the important thing is, to JUST DO IT! Even if you’re not a programmer, you can go to something like www.freemerchant.com and create quite a decent site.

Lang: Which methods have you used to try and promote your store? Which were most / least effective?

Wason: When we launched our site we offered a free give away for each 1000th visitor that registered. We also offered the “original electronic bookmark card”. Basically, it was an early e-card.

The contests drew good traffic but I think a large percentage were not interested in our products, just in the contest. We haven’t done one in over a year.

The e-cards are a great draw during holidays. Apparently there are Netheads that try to send each other a card from every site. We’ve been on some of their favorite lists for years. It’s brings traffic, and I imagine, some sales.

The first few years I did the free banner exchanges on the home page. The response was so low, that when they went animated, I decided they were not worth the bandwith they were sucking from my customers.

I often sell items on Ebay, with a nice link to our site. I’ll sell discontinued items, products I’m considering adding or even totally unrelated items. I consider it marketing and I’m not upset if the auctioned item doesn’t sell. The cost to list is as low as 25 cents for 10 days on one of the most heavily visited sites on the Net. Anyone who searchs for “lamp” or “lamp kits” during those ten days will find my listing, since I mention it in the description. Real traffic and sales increase during Ebay auctions.

I’ve found webrings are another under-rated marketing tool. In a previous version of the site, I had webring links for almost every product page. There was a beaders ring for the wire shades they use, a Yankee ring for the baseball lamp, doll lovers ring for the doll lamp, etc. The traffic they bring in can be so targeted, that even though the numbers were low, the sales for that product increased. I do plan on incorporating more webrings into the site again.

Since the Net is so Niche oriented, I’ve found it easier to market individual products rather than the site as a whole. We have lampshades made of artist quality watercolor paper. I look for fine art supply sites and suggest links to our site, stressing that we carry these shades as well as other lamp crafting supplies. I go to beading sites and mention the wire frames that they need. It’s like a resume, you need to alter your description slightly, if you want to look like a candidate.

The most effective advertising for LampLink has come in the form of free, unsolicited mentions in craft books, magazines and decorating shows. Writers and writer’s assistants are on the Web, looking for stories and products. Since LampLink is on the Web too, they just find us. This has been the most surprising thing for me. We were listed as a resource in a wonderful book, called “Making Great Lamps”, in 1997. I can not tell you how many people continue to find us through that book. Some people read it in a library and some at Barnes & Noble and some people, of course, even buy it.

Our own printed catalog is also a great marketing tool. I put off publishing a catalog for years. As the product list grew, though, people started begging me for one. I put it off as long as I could. Some people were hounding me! Then Better Homes and Gardens wanted to use us a resource in one of their publications. Without a printed catalog, we would lose sales, so that was the final straw. It’s in black and white and says color photos are available on our website. It’s very effective. I’m working on a new Summer version now.

Lang: What are your plans to develop the store over the coming 6-12 months?

Wason: Somehow, I’ve gotten away without a shopping cart. I take everything very slowly! I didn’t see a need for one when they first came out. Now, they are standard, and there’s a nice selection available. I’ll add a cart soon.

I’m revising the product list for the Summer issue of our print catalog. The website products will also be revised. So, within the next month, products will get a major overhaul. The site as a whole will be revised once or twice in the next 12 months.

I’m looking into pick, pack & shipping services. Actually, I was really happy to find Netship, through your site. I’m negotiating with them, now and it looks good.

My goal is to outsource as much as possible. That is becoming easier and easier on the Net.

I’m also toying with the idea of selling the company. I’m researching this new concept of selling an online business. This is new for everyone, so once again, it’s hard to know exactly what to expect. Luckily, we had the foresight to make this a corporation. I will just sell my shares and as it’s own entity, LampLink, Inc., will continue to own the domain name, software licenses, etc. If it was not a corporation, I can see that selling an online business would be more complicated and riskier.

In my next on-line project, I’d like to go much further from brick and mortar. I’d like to really push the envelope, go over the edge. I like to write fiction and I like to create websites. I look at Fingerhut’s Andy’s Garage (www.andysgarage.com), and I am intrigued with the idea of creating a fictional crew, a fictional place, that is a real business.

Lang: Finally, what are your top tips for anyone considering opening their own Web store?

Wason:

Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true! That’s not said to inspire you, but to caution you. It’s very easy to open a website. It’s not so easy to run a business.
Plan on totally revising your site every 6-8 months. I can’t imagine spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for a website that looks outdated 6 months later, but it will happen, whether you spend the money or not. So, make sure there is someone on your staff that can at least change the content on each page, easily.
From day one, have a form for visitor comments. Include a “How did you find us?” question. Make email address an option. (More people will fill it out.) Ask for street address, too. You’ll learn more about your traffic than a log analysis can tell you. (This is how I know how effective a mention in a book or magazine is.) You’ll also have a mailing list, when it’s time to go to print.
Be prepared for this question – “Do you sell wholesale?”
Be prepared for many crazy questions.
Be creative and have fun. This is a new frontier. No one can tell you what the Net will look like one year from now. If you’re on the Net, you’re defining it. So, don’t be limited by definitions that were made for a different world.

LampLink – Mary Lu Wason – Store Review

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