Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How much business are you doing in China? What percentage of your revenue comes from China right now?

Peter Mann: This year, we’re planning to do $10 million. I would say 40% would be in China this year. >>>

Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Where is your contract manufacturer in the US?

Peter Mann: They’re in Connecticut.

Sramana Mitra: Are you selling the new product in the US only?

Peter Mann: We sell in the US, Canada, and China.

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Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: It’s mostly paid search-based customer acquisition – PPC?

Peter Mann: That’s how we started. We have a brand that no one has ever heard before. It’s hard to get started and so PPC is the quick way to get up and going. It’s expensive, though. We’re trying to have PR and some other marketing in place as well. Google PPC is still probably two-thirds of our advertisement spend though. It’s down from close to 100%.

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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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Online Fashion: A Venture Scale Opportunity That Silicon Valley Does Not Understand

Fashion is a HUGE industry. The global women’s clothing industry, just a piece of it, is expected to exceed $621 billion in 2014. How many industries do you know of that scale?

Yet, online, fashion has still relatively a small presence.

In this article, I will explain why, and how to unlock the potential of this enormous industry using the strategies and tactics of Silicon Valley.

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