Hello Community!
Now that we’ve completed the move to our new office, launched the new site, doubled the size of our team, made several process improvements, and raised six million dollars, we’re now turning our focus to two specific areas. First, continuing to improve how we identify, select and develop the best possible products, and second, selling the products so we can reward you guys as much as possible (cha-ching)!
Today I wanted to give you an update on what we’re doing on the sales front:
(I’ve also created a forum topic to gather feedback and ideas.)
• Engaged a Big Box Rep Firm. We’ve hired the top rep firm – Compass Marketing in Minneapolis – to help us develop relationships and sell the quirky products into big box retailers and other key strategic accounts. The accounts are Best Buy, Brookstone, Costco, HSN, QVC, Sam’s Club, ShopNBC, Target, Toys R Us and Wal-Mart. Developing these relationships takes time and our hope is to begin with their online stores this year and grow into the physical stores in 2011. If we get lucky, we may get into one or two of these in 2010. Our kick-off meeting with Compass is this Friday in Minneapolis.
• Evaluating Other Rep Firms. We’re identifying and evaluating other rep firms that may have specific expertise in certain regions (cities, states, or regions) or categories (design shops, hardware stores, college book stores, etc). If you have any ideas, let us know.
• Hire #1: We’ve hired Matt Beckemyer to lead our efforts of selling products directly on quirky.com. Matt is responsible for making the site easier for shoppers and he’ll also be developing SEM, SEO and other marketing initiatives to drive buyers to our site. Matt has a lot of experience in online commerce and in less than two weeks is already driving significant changes at quirky. He’s a terrible coffee maker but is rumored to be a former beer pong gold medalist. We’re excited to welcome him to the quirky team and you’ll be hearing from him soon. If you have any ideas for him, please let us know.
• Hire #2: We’ve hired Joanna Roth to help develop relationships with US retailers not covered by Compass or another rep firm. There are approximately 300 of these retailers across the US. Joanna spent a few years in sales in a large bank and at Lulu Lemon. She was also a bad-ass varsity tennis player at Princeton. Joanna begins next week. We’re excited to welcome her to the team and get her out evangelizing quirky to retailers nationwide.
• Hire #3: We’re currently interviewing for someone to develop and manage international distribution. Our goal is to be selling products into more than a dozen countries by the end of this year. This includes identifying and evaluating distributors, negotiating the terms of the relationships, educating on new products each week and working with operations, finance, design, and marketing to optimize sales. We expect to have this person started no later than June 1st.
• Exploring how you guys can help. If any of you guys are interested we’re exploring ways the community can help us sell products. This could be direct to consumers (think some cool new version of Avon) and/or wholesale (talking to retailers). We haven’t figured out a great way to do this yet but are actively thinking about it. Let us know any good ideas.
There’s a lot we’ve already done and a lot more we’ll be doing to promote the quirky products and increase sales and rewards to the Community. There’s no silver bullet here. It’s a lot of hard work, evangelizing, educating, follow-up and baby steps each day. We’ll continue to get stronger and stronger and over time we’ll build a killer distribution network. As always, let us know if you have any ideas on how we can do this better, faster or cheaper!
Mitch
email: mitch(at)quirky(dot)com
twitter: @mitchlowe
