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India’s Flagship Global Product Story: Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. [This interview is featured in my Entrepreneur Journeys book, Seed India – How To Navigate The Seed Capital Gap in India] Jaspreet is a co-founder and CEO of Druva. An entrepreneur at heart, he bootstrapped the company while defining the product, sales and marketing strategies that
Niche E-Commerce to $5M: Dan Dillon, CEO of CleanItSupply.com (Part 7)
Sramana: Are there other companies similar to yours that you compete with directly? Dan Dillon: There are a lot of national players who are behind the scenes. An average consumer would not know about them, but they are doing stuff every day with larger accounts. They are calling on steel mills, medical buildings, and hospitals.
Niche E-Commerce to $5M: Dan Dillon, CEO of CleanItSupply.com (Part 6)
Sramana: Who was your third hire? Dan Dillon: Someone to manage content. We realized how important search engine optimization was and how dirty the content was that we received from suppliers. The janitorial supply business is very old. We had to convert the information from fliers and info sheets that manufacturers had into content that
Niche E-Commerce to $5M: Dan Dillon, CEO of CleanItSupply.com (Part 5)
Sramana: Given your business model, where you do not have to deal with the logistics of the shipments, what kind of margin do you do? Dan Dillon: We have a floor of between 8 and 9 margin points when marketing via comparison shopping engines. If people are coming in organically or directly due to our
Niche E-Commerce to $5M: Dan Dillon, CEO of CleanItSupply.com (Part 4)
Sramana: When it comes to your commercial business, who are you selling to? Are your primary customers janitorial suppliers, or are they building managers? Dan Dillon: We certainly have an audience of building contractors, maid services, and cleaning services that travel from location to location. The larger audience for us is the facility or office
Niche E-Commerce to $5M: Dan Dillon, CEO of CleanItSupply.com (Part 3)
Sramana: How much volume were you able to generate with search engine optimization as your primary customer acquisition strategy? Dan Dillon: From October 2006 through the end of the year, we did a whopping $30,000 of business. In 2007 we did $300,000 of business. In 2008 we did $600,000 of business, and in 2009 we
Niche E-Commerce to $5M: Dan Dillon, CEO of CleanItSupply.com (Part 2)
Sramana: Was the premise of CleanItSupply.com to sell cleaning supplies to companies like your family business? Dan Dillon: Yes, we wanted to sell to janitorial services companies as well as the suppliers of janitorial services companies. The experience I had in the trenches let me know my space and my vertical very well. I had
Niche E-Commerce to $5M: Dan Dillon, CEO of CleanItSupply.com (Part 1)
Dan Dillon is the founder and CEO of CleanItSupply.com. He was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. After completing his studies, he worked in his father’s janitorial supply business and helped grow it from 18 employees to 150 employees before the company was sold. Today his niche e-commerce site, CleanItSupply.com, has revenues in