Best of Bootstrapping: Student Entrepreneurs Bootstrapped an E-Commerce Company to $19M

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  We’ve seen a real trend of zero-logistics e-commerce businesses scaling phenomenally well. Read Wrist-Band Founder CEO Azim Makanojiya’s experience up to when we spoke in 2014. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised?

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Best of Bootstrapping: Student Entrepreneurs Bootstrapped a Zero-Logistics E-Commerce Company to $19M

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  We’ve seen a real trend of zero-logistics e-commerce businesses scaling phenomenally well. Read Wrist-Band.com Founder CEO Azim Makanojiya’s experience up to when we spoke in 2014. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised?

Read Full Article »

Student Entrepreneurs Bootstrapping a Zero-Logistics E-Commerce Company to $19 Million: Wrist-Band.com CEO Azim Makanojiya (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: The competition for keywords has gone up in the course of this, right? Azim Makanojiya: Significantly. What we used to pay 20 cents for, we now pay $6 to $7. Sramana Mitra: How has that impacted the business?

Student Entrepreneurs Bootstrapping a Zero-Logistics E-Commerce Company to $19 Million: Wrist-Band.com CEO Azim Makanojiya (Part 6)

Azim Makanojiya: The other company then told them that they can still service us. They got their orders for three weeks but didn’t pay the factory. In the meantime, they built their own factory in China and started doing orders. They left the factory with unpaid bill of about $175,000. We’re now basically the sole company that sources from

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Student Entrepreneurs Bootstrapping a Zero-Logistics E-Commerce Company to $19 Million: Wrist-Band.com CEO Azim Makanojiya (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: $110,000 to $6.9 million! Explain to me how that happened? What were the strategic levers? Azim Makanojiya: We were all new to this industry. We didn’t know what was going on. The only reason that this could happen at a very fast pace, from my point of view, was because we had the drive.

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Student Entrepreneurs Bootstrapping a Zero-Logistics E-Commerce Company to $19 Million: Wrist-Band.com CEO Azim Makanojiya (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: For the keyword search traffic that you were getting from Google, to convert that into an order, were you taking orders and then ordering the products from the Chinese factory? Azim Makanojiya: At that point, order volume wasn’t high. We didn’t have a platform for them to order online at that point in 2010.

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Student Entrepreneurs Bootstrapping a Zero-Logistics E-Commerce Company to $19 Million: Wrist-Band.com CEO Azim Makanojiya (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Why that? What prompted your interest in that area specifically? Azim Makanojiya: We were at this e-commerce conference where it all started. There was a presenter there who was about 19 years old and had started a wristband company. He talked about his company and how he did his business. All his products were made in

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Student Entrepreneurs Bootstrapping a Zero-Logistics E-Commerce Company to $19 Million: Wrist-Band.com CEO Azim Makanojiya (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What happened the first time you showed up and saw that you’re a young kid. Do they mind? Azim Makanojiya: I was a little afraid that they would mind. I had a professional attitude from the start. I wouldn’t go in wearing jeans and a shirt but would be properly dressed in khaki pants and a

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