Peter
Erickson of Massachusetts started in the industrial and safety supply
business 26 years ago. He, along with his wife Gina and a few other
family members, built the business from the ground up, learning about
all of the product lines and key players in the industry as they went.
After 18 years in the business, he sold this business to another company
to pursue other ventures.
Peter had always wanted to go full-time into commercial software and
business development. He became a lead developer and director of Information
Technology for a few different companies, one being a major player in
the financial fulfillment and travel marketing arena. He later left
this company as the .Net boom, combined with the downturn in the financial
and travel business after 9-11, caused him to lay off 80 percent of
his staff.
At this point, Peter combined both of his strong suits-industrial and
safety supplies with Internet marketing and web development. He knew
that building his own site would take much too long and that time was
better spent marketing and setting up a chain of suppliers. As luck
would have it, he came across a very timely email, which normally would
have gone into the trash bin, from StoresOnline.
The email advised Peter of a seminar to be hosted in a few weeks that
also came with a free lunch. He and his partner, Gina, both went to
the seminar with an open mind and a great deal of prior knowledge stemming
from his past experiences. Peter had been building portal sites as well
as e-commerce sites from the ground up for other clients, but knew that,
in order to make this fly, more attention had to be paid to the marketing
of the site(s) as well as the time spent developing and nurturing new
vendors. The first seminar, or sales presentation, provided enough impetus
for Peter and his wife to take the next step and join the training session
that was to be provided by StoresOnline.
The seminar provided enough information to get his sites up and running
very quickly. It showed him how to get sales from the very first day
of publishing each site and how to maintain sales after that. The question
of whether to buy a pre-built and tested product or build a site and
spent several months debugging and massaging it for optimization was
solved within moments of the seminars.
Peter attended the StoresOnline workshop in July 2003. Less than 10
days later his first site was published, with his second site not far
behind.
"We generated sales the very first day with some of the tricks
taught in the seminar," Peter says. "Since then, all we do
is add new product, update content, pricing, and take sales calls."
Nine months have passed, and Peter has published four stores.
His first store to be published, All Work Gloves, is currently generating
enough new and repeat business to replace his previous job. Peter's
day starts very early because sales come from the Canadian outer islands
and oil rigs and end as the sun sets over the California coast.
Peter's other sites are all centered on the same product line, but
broken into very small components to become very content focused. He
sells first aid supplies and kits, safety glasses, ear protection, hard
hats, rain suits and boots, and more. Peter has tried other site ideas
using one of his stores as a test marketing area. If the site doesn't
fly in 20 days, he erases the content, removes the PPCs, and moves onto
the next idea until a winner is born.
Just months after attending the StoresOnline preview and workshop,
Peter Erickson no longer works a "regular job." His websites
are his job, his financial future, and his future retirement income.
"This is all I do," he says. Of course, with the phones ringing
pretty much 24-7, who would have any time for anything else.
"We went down to the office on Thanksgiving Day after we finished
eating, and low and behold, I had several sales while we all ate dinner."
Visit Peter Erickson's Store Online at www.allworkgloves.com
*Testimonial results are not typical and your individual results will vary. Your success depends on having the right price, product, and marketing efforts.
