Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping a Niche E-commerce Brand

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

We’ve talked about niche, proprietary e-commerce brands and how entrepreneurs are building businesses around different concepts. Founder Eric Shannon shared the story of Big Barker, a dog bed for large dogs, with me in 2017.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Eric Shannon: I was born in Pennsylvania in a suburb about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I went to Temple University. I was a Finance major. After school, I moved to California and took a job in banking. I hated it and was terrible at it. I had a couple of other jobs and eventually discovered the internet side of the economy. I became very attached to it. I started in that industry in 2004.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Global E-commerce Venture to $50M

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

When we spoke in 2018, SmartBuyGlasses Co-CEO David Menning had bootstrapped a global e-commerce venture from Hong Kong to $50M. Splendid execution!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

David Menning: I grew up in Sydney. I’ve been educated in Australia. In my later years, I studied at universities overseas both in Canada and Japan for a little while. It was this time when I was abroad spending time in different countries that I was exposed to different business models, cultures, and people.

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Building a Fashion E-commerce Business and Surviving Covid: Go Dash Dot CEO Hannah Fastov (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Did revenue take a hit in 2020?

Hannah Fastov: It did. That was when we were able to see the benefits of the direct to consumer business that we had built. It remained equal to the year prior.

Sramana Mitra: You did $2 million in 2020?

Hannah Fastov: Yes.

Building a Fashion E-commerce Business and Surviving Covid: Go Dash Dot CEO Hannah Fastov (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What level did you reach in 2019?

Hannah Fastov: In 2019, we did $4 million. Then the pandemic hit.

Sramana Mitra: How did that go?

Hannah Fastov: That was an interesting time for us. We’re selling an on-the-go bag and everybody’s staying home. We just had our shipment come in at the beginning of March 2020. All of our wholesale partners either postponed or cancelled their orders. We had a ton of inventory.

Building a Fashion E-commerce Business and Surviving Covid: Go Dash Dot CEO Hannah Fastov (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: That brings us to end of 2017. What kind of revenues were you tracking at?

Hannah Fastov: Close to a million. At this time, most of our revenue was coming in from our wholesale business but we were doing over $250,000 on our website. When we saw what was working in advertising, then we were able to put a bit more into our advertising and use our profits to reinvest back.

Sramana Mitra: What are the highlights of 2018?

Building a Fashion E-commerce Business and Surviving Covid: Go Dash Dot CEO Hannah Fastov (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me about traffic for the Shopify website. What strategy did you follow to drive traffic?

Hannah Fastov: After we launched our Shopify website, we started to engage with a digital advertising agency. I worked closely with them to develop this strategy of how we are going to get people to our website. We focused on Instagram and Facebook, more Facebook at that time. What we learned is that, like you mentioned earlier, who our customer was. It’s so important to define your demographic. For us, we felt like we were all over the place.

Building a Fashion E-commerce Business and Surviving Covid: Go Dash Dot CEO Hannah Fastov (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The positioning was as a gym bag.

Hannah Fastov: We started as a gym bag. Our first trade show and our first target demo was either to the fitness instructor who was teaching four different classes all over the place who was always on the go. We also targeted the avid gym goer who is going to the gym and then straight to work or vice versa. Once we started to sell the bag, I learned that it was so much more than that. A lot of people were using it for the gym but also for travel, baby bag, or tennis bag. We started to evolve into more of a lifestyle accessories brand.

Building a Fashion E-commerce Business and Surviving Covid: Go Dash Dot CEO Hannah Fastov (Part 2)

Hannah Fastov: For six months, I couldn’t stop thinking about this idea. In January of 2016, I googled “New York handbag designer”. I found my designer who had been with me since the beginning. She helped me commercialize my ideas. She took what I wanted, made it into a bag that had the potential to sell, and created everything that we needed to send to a manufacturer.