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e-commerce case study
Bootstrapping E-Commerce to 16 Million: Valerie Holstein, CEO of Cableorganizer.com (Part 7)
Sramana: If you are seriously thinking about heading out to get an executive MBA, then I will tell you to save yourself the money and trouble. Just do 1M/1M. We teach everything about entrepreneurship in a very efficient program for just $1,000 a year. Valerie Holstein: Maybe I should do that. I will definitely look
Bootstrapping E-Commerce to 16 Million: Valerie Holstein, CEO of Cableorganizer.com (Part 6)
Sramana: What are the functions that you staff for today? Customer support and shipping are obviously key roles. Valerie Holstein: Right now it is mostly customer service associates and outside sales people. We have a reverse approach to business. We are technically 100% e-commerce, but we recognize that in order to leverage our exposure, we
Bootstrapping E-Commerce to 16 Million: Valerie Holstein, CEO of Cableorganizer.com (Part 5)
Sramana: You had massive growth from $200,000 in revenue to $16 million in revenue. What did you do in terms of marketing? Valerie Holstein: Believe it or not, I was not doing any advertising at that time. It was all organic growth and traffic. I could not go fast enough to serve the customer base
Bootstrapping E-Commerce to 16 Million: Valerie Holstein, CEO of Cableorganizer.com (Part 4)
Sramana: How much revenue did you generate from CableOrganizer.com during your first year? Valerie Holstein: I did a little bit under $200,000. Sramana: Wow! That is not bad for a garage, grass roots operation. Valerie Holstein: Every penny that we made was reinvested in purchasing more product for inventory. Whatever was not reinvested in additional
Bootstrapping E-Commerce to 16 Million: Valerie Holstein, CEO of Cableorganizer.com (Part 3)
Sramana: In 2002 when you started selling things to hide computer cables, how did people find your website? Was it primarily via your blog? Valerie Holstein: Yes, it was from the blog. I had a couple of pages that explained the issues we had and what products were helpful in hiding the cables. People started
Bootstrapping E-Commerce to 16 Million: Valerie Holstein, CEO of Cableorganizer.com (Part 2)
Sramana: When did you start CableOrganizer.com? Valerie Holstein: We actually started the company 10 years ago when I was nin3 months pregnant with my child. I was still working full-time as a drafting engineer for a screen enclosure company. My husband was working more than full time at Computer Science Corporation. He was a trainer
Bootstrapping E-Commerce to 16 Million: Valerie Holstein, CEO of Cableorganizer.com (Part 1)
Valerie Holstein is co-founder, president and CEO of CableOrganizer.com, now among the world’s leading purveyors of cable and wire management-related products. Prior to co-founding CableOrganizer.com in 2002, Holstein served as assistant drafting engineer at Buchanan Screens, a major fabricator of screen enclosures in South Florida. Prior to this, from 2000 to 2001, Holstein served as
