Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and pets.com was taking the investment world by storm I came across a book, now lost, extolling the future of commerce – Zero Gravity, a weightless world where a seller would be unencumbered by physical inventory, a storefront or employees. A weightless world of pure sales with no messy handling of stuff.
This was 1999 or so, and I had just got my shiny new ADSL connection after a six-month waiting list, ditched my 56K modem and was surfing the information superhighway through my full VGA 14 inch monitor. The prospect of terminating the lease on my 3 bay shop and paring down my 5 employee crew and replacing them with me, a cold drink and a keyboard seemed so good, I had to do it, I thought.
The next step in my education was a book I still own, and now that it’s (almost) obsolete, I sort of understand. But back then, it was wild stuff indeed. “Building Database Driven Web Catalogs” by Danish and Gannon was a tough read for a boy who could barely muster Netscape Composer to make a ‘home’ page with text and images. Nonetheless, it was inspirational and it seemed to tie in with the zero gravity idea.
I thought, wow, if I could put a catalog of stuff online, get somebody to warehouse it, collect the money and get that stuff shipped, without mussing my hair, that would be truly awesome. And profitable beyond the dreams of Croesus.
That’s how it all started and that’s why I’m where I am now. Not rich by any means, but headed there, I think, finally. Along the way I made mistakes and got some things right in spite of advice to the contrary (you know – sensible folk who know how you should do things).
My goal in this blog is to explore the ideas that I first encountered so long ago and that have shaped my business life since then. I will lead you through how I did it, how I built an ecommerce empire and how you can, too. Of course, you’ll do it your way. But try to make your own mistakes. No need to repeat mine. There’s more $$$ to be made with new mistakes than with old.