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Bootstrapping a $10 Million E-Commerce Business: Seismic Audio CEO Steve Acree (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me a bit about where your revenues are today. We are getting to the end of 2015. What number are you going to close at this year?

Steve Acree: In 2012, Amazon approached us. They wanted to purchase directly from us. That has beefed up the revenue this year. Last year, we did just over $8 million. Normally, we see a big bump at Christmas. If the percentages hold true compared to what we’ve done in the last years, we should be able to hit $10 million this year.

Sramana Mitra: Terrific. How much is eBay and how much is Amazon? What’s the distribution? >>>

Bootstrapping a $10 Million E-Commerce Business: Seismic Audio CEO Steve Acree (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How much was your total revenue line in 2009 when you had six employees?

Steve Acree: In the neighborhood of $2.5 million to $3 million.

Sramana Mitra: What’s the next major inflection point in the business after 2009?

Steve Acree: It started to get cumbersome. It was three dashboards. You had to plug in tracking numbers in all of them. was little automation. I was hiring employees to do the work. It could have been automated, but I was tight with my money. Finally, I used Channel Advisor, which allowed automation like crazy. It allowed to try new marketplaces, which at that time, wasn’t a whole lot. As the new marketplaces came out, I was able to get on them through Channel Advisor very easily. It allowed me to try a lot of things. I was able to adjust my pricing on Amazon. >>>

Bootstrapping a $10 Million E-Commerce Business: Seismic Audio CEO Steve Acree (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In 2007 when you introduced this new channel, how much did Amazon do?

Steve Acree: Amazon, at the get-go, didn’t do a whole lot. In the first month, it sold about 10 items. By the six-month mark, it was doing about $10,000 a month in sales. After about 12 months, it was doing about $65,000 in sales. After about 18 months, it got up to about $150,000.

Sramana Mitra: In 2008, were those the only two channels—eBay and Amazon?

Steve Acree: In 2008, I turned the website into a place where you could actually make a purchase. I self-taught myself HTML, which I learned from doing eBay. I created the website myself. At that time, it looked like a 5th grader had made it. Around October of 2008, we introduced the website. By then, I had hired two more employees. People were starting to figure >>>

Bootstrapping a $10 Million E-Commerce Business: Seismic Audio CEO Steve Acree (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What really clicked in gear in 2003? If you look 12 years back when you decided that this was where you’re going to spend your time, what clicked in gear?

Steve Acree: Just the idea that everybody is moving to the Internet. They’re interested in eBay and Amazon. I had really good success with the DVDs. At one point, that was going to be my career. I was going to be the DVD man, but I had to find something new. That’s when I decided to go back to school. I saw that the speakers business was working. After doing research, I realized that there are thousands and thousands of products that relate to audio equipment that are overpriced. I could cut out the middleman. I could become the brand. That’s what I did. I created my own brand. When you buy from us, you’re buying a Seismic Audio product. You’re not buying some other brand name.

Sramana Mitra: I see. So you private-labeled the product.
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Bootstrapping a $10 Million E-Commerce Business: Seismic Audio CEO Steve Acree (Part 1)

E-commerce companies are relatively easy to bootstrap. Steve tells the story of his journey bootstrapping Seismic Audio to almost $10 million in revenue.

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

Steve Acree: I was born in Tennessee, about 60 miles north of Memphis. I went to school for computers but I’ve never used my degree. I chose the wrong computer industry. I chose the repair side instead of the software side.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after you finished college?
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Navigating Risk and Design in Startups

By Guest Author Soren Petersen

Investing in new entrepreneurial ventures operating within The Creative Economy may be the best option for creating future progress. Startups have the advantage of beginning with a blank slate and their key strategic advantage lies in creating breakthrough innovative offerings while mitigating exposure to the disproportionately large risk. >>>

Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How is the customer base distributed? Are we talking Asian customers? How have you built the sales channel?

Dave Peters: We’ve got 13 telco customers across Australia, Asia, Middle East, and Africa. All of them are paying for recurring software fees and also for our managed marketing operations team. We have teams on the ground plus some centralized remote teams to provide the software and the services for them to run all of their customer value management.

Sramana Mitra: Do you sell direct or through channel partners? >>>

Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Was this the first funding?

Dave Peters: That’s right.

Sramana Mitra: What happened after you got that first funding? What were the next major milestones or accomplishments?

Dave Peters: Based on that, we built up the team and started to develop the product further. We started to push the sales and marketing team. We managed to then win a deal with a telecommunications company in Singapore and a deal with Hong Kong Telecom in Hong Kong. Over the next 18 months, we won two more deals. They were license deals with maintenance and support. The one in Hong Kong was a multi-million dollar deal. We started to see good returns for the business.

Sramana Mitra: How did the revenue ramp from 2000 to 2005?
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