Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Brand: Big Barker CEO Eric Shannon (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to get up to a point where banks were willing to give you lines of credit for inventory?

Eric Shannon: We never had a problem. I never got a no when I asked. By the time I asked, we were well in the seven figures in revenue. I was getting offers before that. The two that I can think of off the top of my head was once I started getting sales, we had a company called Kabbage.

Sramana Mitra: I know Kabbage very well. We’ve covered them extensively. In the kind of work that you do, >>>

Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Brand: Big Barker CEO Eric Shannon (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to get to a million dollars in revenue, and was that how you got to a million dollars in revenue?

Eric Shannon: The first 12-month period in which we did a million dollars in revenue was probably 75% Amazon.

Sramana Mitra: Got it. What was the second channel after Amazon?

Eric Shannon: The second channel was our own website based on the strength of Facebook. >>>

Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Brand: Big Barker CEO Eric Shannon (Part 3)

Eric Shannon: In my previous business, we had worked with a guy who has a workshop in California. This guy is just a world-class expert when it comes to polyurethane, which is what foam is made of. In his workshop, he’s been making furniture and bedding since the late 1970s.

I went to him and said, “Here’s what I’m looking to do. I’m looking to do a bed and I’m looking for a manufacturing partner to make this for me. The specifications are, number one, it has to be big enough for big dogs. Forget about the flattening issue. Most beds that were being made just, literally, didn’t have enough surface area to contain a Mastiff or a Great Dane. >>>

Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Brand: Big Barker CEO Eric Shannon (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of trajectory was that company on? You were doing e-commerce?

Eric Shannon: Yes, exactly. It was strictly dog supplies and things that you couldn’t find at the pet store.

Sramana Mitra: For example, what were you selling?

Eric Shannon: The same categories that you would find at a pet store. We were sourcing products from very small mom-and-pop boutique manufacturers. It was at the higher-end of the price spectrum. It was primarily search engine driven. We didn’t >>>

Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Brand: Big Barker CEO Eric Shannon (Part 1)

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

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

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 >>>

Building a Fast-Growth Marketplace: Stefania Mallett, CEO of EZCater (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Any other strategic moves that you made in building the company that are worth going over?

Stefania Mallett: We made the choice from the start to deliberately build a culture of insane helpfulness. I can’t say that we use that phrase. We didn’t articulate that into those two words. We focused on providing fantastic customer service to both sides of our marketplace. We’ve always taken both sides of our marketplaces equally seriously.

We feel that if you are a company that is extremely easy to do business with without being total pushovers, then you create no >>>

Building a Fast-Growth Marketplace: Stefania Mallett, CEO of EZCater (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: But then you got to get them to come. That’s the tricky part. It’s usually true about marketplaces that one side adopts faster. If I’m thinking about your business, these caterers wanted the marketing angle that you provide. That’s the draw why these caterers would come.

Stefania Mallett: Very much so. The story is exactly what you said. We don’t charge the caterers anything unless they get an order. We would say to them, “It would cost you nothing.” As one caterer said to me, “Wait a minute. I have to pay to have my ad in the yellow pages whether anybody reads the ad or ever dials my number. You’re telling me you’re going to give me yellow pages >>>

Building a Fast-Growth Marketplace: Stefania Mallett, CEO of EZCater (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to take an MVP out and when did you bring that to market?

Stefania Mallett: We started by leasing software from a consumer residential food ordering platform. We thought, “How different can corporate catering orders be from consumer residential orders?” We were quite naive about that because we discovered pretty rapidly that you have to make quite a lot of  changes. The two markets are very different. We had a product that allowed us, in fall of 2007, our first orders.

By February of 2009, we decided we had to build our own custom platform for corporate catering needs, and broke away from the >>>