Getting to Velocity: TeePublic Founder Adam Schwartz (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the structure of how you would do this buyout? What proposal was on the table and how did you do the financial engineering of this buyout?

Adam Schwartz: It was somewhat complicated actually. In all honesty, my partner Josh orchestrated it because he was already at IAC. Effectively, IAC owed Josh money from his previous deal. The way that we worked it out, in part, was that in exchange for the money that was owed, we would get the business out.

Sramana Mitra: Did Josh own most of the company? What was your deal?

Adam Schwartz: At that time, Josh owned most of the company and I had a a minority equity stake.

Sramana Mitra: You went to work for BustedTees basically. >>>

Cross Border E-Commerce in Africa: Mall For Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 1)

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We covered Mall for Africa some time back in TLEC. Here we trace their entrepreneurial journey.

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

Chris Folayan: I’m from Nigeria. I was born and raised in Nigeria. I came to the United States for college. Everything prior to college was done in Nigeria.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you come to the US for college?

Chris Folayan: I came to San Jose State University. >>>

Getting to Velocity: TeePublic Founder Adam Schwartz (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did the company grow? How far did you get?

Adam Schwartz: It’s a while ago now, so it’s hard to remember exactly. I worked on it from 2009 to 2011. We definitely had thousands of SKUs of textiles and we’ve had hundreds of suppliers and thousands of designers who were using this site. The sample business of it was good. We were selling a lot of samples. That was happening a lot. They came through.

We went through two major iterations at that time. We played with subscription-based model and others. It takes a while just to get the product to a place where it’s something other than an MVP which probably happened for us a year in. Maybe, even later than that. Then you say, “It’s something more than an MVP. Is it any good?” >>>

Scaling a Family E-Commerce Business: Lucky Vitamin CEO Sam Wolf (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you a couple of questions in terms of the process of building this company. In this journey, what are some of the most important strategic moves that you’ve made?

Sam Wolf: One of the most important strategic moves is to really understand who our customer is and what’s important to them. We’ve made sure that we’re aligned with what we think and know is important to the consumer. We put a lot of focus into the products that we sell in curating and implementing standards. We’ve got a team of merchants who scour the globe, if you will, to find some of the most unique items that we bring in.

We’ve got a lot of companies that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Some of them have eventually grown into fairly large businesses starting with us. We spend a lot of time really making sure that we’re bringing in the right items and that they’re going to align with the values that we promote and that our customers believe in. >>>

Scaling a Family E-Commerce Business: Lucky Vitamin CEO Sam Wolf (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Help me understand what kind of ramp you saw from the point where things started finding their stride. What kind of growth have you seen?

Sam Wolf: The business has been through an evolution. We’re now 10 years old and our 11th anniversary is coming up. There’s over 200 people involved in the business, but we still have a lot of ties to our family roots that we grew out of. For the first couple of years, we were growing really fast and we were trying to put in the systems and technology to support it.

We are totally self-funded. We were funding everything out of cash flow. It eclipsed the size of the brick-and-mortar business that we were doing. We were pulling resources from my father’s side of the business saying, “Can I get somebody to come over here and help me because we have orders to ship out?” I would say that the first five years of the business was growing so quickly that we were putting out a lot of fires, building the infrastructure, building the foundation of the business, making mistakes, and learning. That was the beginning. >>>

Scaling a Family E-Commerce Business: Lucky Vitamin CEO Sam Wolf (Part 2)

Sam Wolf: I started working three months after I graduated and launched it the in following June. I hired a couple of developers. We worked on putting it together. We launched with 7,000 items mainly vitamins and supplements that I knew were selling well and were good items from my experience in the health food business. Two to three weeks went by and I didn’t get any orders. I said, “Good thing I have law school coming up.” I wasn’t ready to give up either.

Sramana Mitra: Why weren’t you getting orders? What was your analysis on why you weren’t getting orders?

Sam Wolf: I put up a website and said, “Let’s see what happens.” I was naive going into this. I knew how to design a site and get it developed but I didn’t really have a lot of marketing experience to drive traffic to the site. I started to learn. I read everything I could about ways to drive traffic—SEO, SEM, and affiliate marketing. >>>

Scaling a Family E-Commerce Business: Lucky Vitamin CEO Sam Wolf (Part 1)

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

All kinds of niche e-commerce businesses have been built over the last 20 years. Sam and his family have built a health and wellness products business that is doing quite well.

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?

Sam Wolf: I was born and raised outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I still reside there now. I grew up in a family that had ran, operated, and owned a family business since the day I was born. My father was fairly entrepreneurial. He inherited a family business from my grandfather. All of the family businesses had always been anchored in health and wellness. I ultimately went to college in Washington DC. I went to American University and graduated from there in 2004 with a Business degree with a specialisation in Information Technology and E-Commerce. >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck from Indiana: One Click Ventures Co-Founder Angie Stocklin (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: The mode in which you’ve done this is actually very interesting. I find it quite fascinating. What else is interesting in the story?

Angie Stocklin: We tested our hand in drop-ship businesses.

Sramana Mitra: That’s a very important point.

Angie Stocklin: Even when we were still in our home, we tested drop-ship businesses. We thought it was a great way to grow without adding inventory. We didn’t have anymore room in our house. It was a process that didn’t work for us for a few reasons. The main reason was that we liked to be in control of the whole process. >>>