Niche E-Commerce in Textbooks: ClassBook CEO Tony Pfister (Part 6)

Sramana: If a student buys a physical book, you ship it from the warehouse. However, what happens on the back end, if the school has implemented iPads and students need to get books that are readable on iPads, How are you procuring digital books for an iPad format given that Apple normally sells them through

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Niche E-Commerce in Textbooks: ClassBook CEO Tony Pfister (Part 5)

Sramana: What is the financing strategy you have followed from 2002 to 2012 as you have built ClassBook.com? Tony Pfister: We have been investing everything back into the business. We took the approach that a healthy business would equal a healthy life. I like the idea of bootstrapping as much as possible. Eventually you hit

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Catching Up On Readings: Special Monday Roundtable

Entrepreneurs are invited to attend two FREE online roundtable competitions next week. Digital commerce entrepreneurs are competing for 12 scholarships to the 1M/1M program for entrepreneurs as part of the BlueSnap–Elance Entrepreneur Development Program. Monday, June 4, at 8:00 a.m. PDT/11:00 a.m. EDT, register here. Thursday, June 7, at 8:00 a.m. PDT/11:00 a.m. EDT, register

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Niche E-Commerce in Textbooks: ClassBook CEO Tony Pfister (Part 4)

Sramana: Who pays for the initial inventor, you or the schools? Tony Pfister: We pay for the inventory, which requires us to be a very efficient operation. We are good at managing inventory levels for schools, and now that a lot of curriculum is all digital, we will have to adjust our approach there as

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Niche E-Commerce in Textbooks: ClassBook CEO Tony Pfister (Part 3)

Sramana: How to schools use your tools to operate their bookstore operations? Tony Pfister: They use our tools to select the course materials. We have warehouse inventories of books. In addition, we manage the digital distribution of course materials for schools as they move into the digital space.

Niche E-Commerce in Textbooks: ClassBook CEO Tony Pfister (Part 2)

Sramana: Shortly after resigning from your cushy job and becoming CEO, you found that the $1.4 million business dwindled to $200,000 with the loss of a single client. What did you do next? Tony Pfister: The first thing I did was question my decision. The next thing I did was refocus. I treated it as

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Niche E-Commerce in Textbooks: ClassBook CEO Tony Pfister (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Tony Pfister is the CEO of ClassBook.com, which provides schools and universities with an online bookstore presence with special emphasis on independent primary and secondary schools. Prior to becoming the CEO of ClassBook, Tony was an auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers. He has an MBA from the State

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Building a Cross-Border e-Commerce Success Selling to Russia: Bay.Ru CEO Aaron Block (Part 7)

Sramana: How much money have you invested or raised to build this company? Aaron Block: We have raised $2.3 million of angel investment. Sramana: Congratulations, you have done a fantastic job of building a business with very little capital. Aaron Block: I am sure you advise your incubator companies on the value of bootstrapping.