Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 4)

Peter Mann: Initially, I started with a couple of factories in China and started with those products to get the business started. These were mostly Chinese developed products that I adjusted and branded. It wasn’t really manufactured from the ground-up by us. Shortly thereafter, I started looking at air purifiers. In its simplest form, it’s a motor, fan, and a filter. My idea was to get the best filters, motors, and fans and put them together. That kicked off about a year’s worth of research into different motor manufacturers. I was looking at it as a high-end consumer product with industrial-quality components. I evaluated component after component until I settled on the components that we felt comfortable putting into the product. We built a prototype and ran it for several months. That’s how we got into the current air products at Oransi.

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Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What happened after Dell?

Peter Mann: When I was at Dell, I learned pretty quickly that the culture wasn’t what I was expecting. At the same time, the Internet bubble burst. Dell started going through round after round of layoffs. The morale was low. It was a difficult environment from a cultural perspective. I was confident that I wasn’t going to lose my job but at the same time, no one really knew what was going to happen.

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Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 2)

Peter Mann: Shortly after that, the Gulf War began and so we were sent over the Red Sea for about six months. That was a changing event for me. I got married a year out of college. We got married very young. I missed the last six months of the pregnancy and I missed the birth. I didn’t actually find out he was born until a day or two after because we didn’t have Internet.

Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking of when you got back from the Gulf War?

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Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 1)

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

Peter Mann started Oransi as a B-to-C e-commerce company. Today, 40% of his $10M revenue comes from China. This is the kind of company America hopes to see more of – selling American products to international consumers.

Sramana Mitra: Peter, let’s start with your background. Where were you born and raised? What kind of background leads up to your entrepreneur story?

Peter Mann: I was born in Syracuse, New York. I lived in the same house till I was 18 and went off to college. My father was a mechanical engineer. He was a manager at General Electric. He comes from a time when people worked 40 years in a company and then get their retirement package. He was also a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Syracuse University. We were heavily involved with the university. I grew up around a university atmosphere during my childhood.

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The Best Part of Being the Boss: Offering Balance

The motivation for Steals.com came to Jana Francis right after she had a daughter, her third child, when she had to head back to work in the sales management team for a dotcom at the end of her maternity leave. She realized she was a smart, capable woman who could work from home. Once she started thinking along those lines, the ideas started to flow.

Jana was always the one you could count on for online shopping deals – her friends called her the dotcom princess. But when it came to online shopping in the baby space, she was disappointed. There was no website that would tell you the story of the product, why you would want it, and what problem it would solve for you. She developed a burning fire to create a new kind of website that would launch new steal deals every day – a steep 40% to 80 % discount on premium baby products.
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1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2013: enMarkit, Singapore

enMarkit is a social engagement and business intelligence platform that enables businesses to gain insights about their customers and develop personalized experiences. Using enMarkit, online businesses can identify their influential referrers, their customers’ lifetime values and buying interests, and conduct targeted loyalty and marketing campaigns online. Within just two months of its transition from a B2C to a B2B model, enMarkit has an expected revenue run rate of $50,000.

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1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2013: Kobster

The Indian ecommerce market has attracted many a retailer. In particular, niche sectors like office supplies that has an annual growth rate of 15 to 20% is attracting quite a few ecommerce ventures. One such ecommerce startup is Kobster.com, a one-stop e-destination for office supplies.

In the highly unorganized office supplies market, Kobster provides an online platform that makes it easy for companies and educational institutes to procure a wide range of office supplies, furniture, customizable stationery and gifts. With doorstep delivery, flexible payment options such as cash on delivery, and the convenience and efficiency of online shopping, Kobster aims to eliminate the need to engage with multiple vendors and end the office supplies procurement nightmare.

Kobster was founded in July 2012 by three college friends, Karthik Ramaiah, Mohan Gayam and Vineet Neeraj. Vineet, a former software developer with Cognizant, manages the marketing and sales aspect of the business. He had earlier launched an event services startup, Yippie, followed by a product startup, ArrayShield.  Karthik, a former Java developer at Cognizant handles all the technical aspects as well as customer support, while Mohan, a former HCL Technologies employee, is responsible for the product catalog and ensuring best deals from suppliers.
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Online Travel Continues to Boom

According to RBC, within the U.S., online travel sales account for 43% of total travel sales. That number is projected to increase marginally to 44% by the end of next year. Analysts believe that increased online sales will be driven by the continued adoption of mobile devices. Meanwhile, online travel sites are expanding their international operations and adding inventory, as well as enhancing mobile operations to ensure they capture a bigger slice of this pie.

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