Looking Into The Future of Internet Marketing

If you have read my earlier post, you might remember that I have predicted more woman Internet Marketers will surfaced in these 2 years.

Lets take a look at the following article by Andrew Johnson.

 A boom of her own: Retailer grows online

The warehouse that serves as headquarters of Marion Kiesling’s online retail business is inconspicuous. The aging 12,000-square-foot building just east of Interstate 17 between Indian School and Camelback roads looks abandoned from the outside.

Inside, the building is a colorful cornucopia of dress hats, fancy silk gloves, parasols and various other hard-to-find clothing items that Kiesling sells on Greatlookz.com and seven other Web sites she owns.

The former marketing and sales executive spent more than 20 years working for Fortune 500 home builders in California before starting GreatLookz Inc. in 2000 as a side business. advertisement  
 
Now, the mother of five runs the company full time.

Business is booming. In 2006, the company did nearly $750,000 in revenue. Kiesling has high expectations for this year because of two acquisitions she finalized last year: Kiesling bought Finale Gloves, a Cedarhurst, N.Y.-based business that had been one of her suppliers, and Royal Trend, a Gardena, Calif.-based hat business.

“I’ll be disappointed if we don’t go over a million (dollars),” she said.

The company has gained fame because celebrities from actress Sharon Stone to first lady Laura Bush have worn gloves sold by GreatLookz.

Also, the company has sold merchandise to renowned fashion designer Betsey Johnson, the Los Angeles Opera and Nordstrom department stores.

Corporate experience

Kiesling got the idea to start an online retail business after her son made $200 selling a video game on eBay.

“I said, ‘Wow, if my son could do this, I could do it,’ ” she said.

So Kiesling, who at the time had a marketing position for real estate firm Castle & Cooke in Sonora, Calif., began scouring rummage sales with her daughters for merchandise to sell on eBay.

Eventually, Kiesling built her own site, www.greatlookz.com and began frequenting Los Angeles’ garment district to expand her product offerings. When the dot-com bust hit, Kiesling was laid off from Castle & Cooke.

“I was faced with the decision whether I should just go for broke on this (online) business or find another job in the real estate business,” she said.

She chose the former.

In 2005, Kiesling bought the warehouse for $1.14 million and moved her company to Phoenix.

Booming sector

In starting GreatLookz, Kiesling joined a growing number of women who are launching e-commerce business. Concrete numbers for how many women own e-commerce businesses are not available, but the Center for Women’s Business Research in Washington, D.C., estimates that women are more likely than men to use the Internet to expand business opportunities.

“I think the Number 1 thing is it’s just so easy to do,” said Heidi Richards, founder and CEO of WECAI Network, formerly the Women’s E-Commerce Association International in Miramar, Fla.

“There’s really no barrier to staring a Web site if you have a domain name,” Richards added.

Online retail sales were expected to grow 20 percent, to $211.4 billion, in 2006, according to a 2006 report conducted by Forrester Research Inc. for Shop.org, the National Retail Federation’s online retail association.

There were 334online shopping and mail-order businesses in Arizona as of 2004, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Multiple outlets

While GreatLookz.com is the primary Web site through which Kiesling sells her merchandise, the company also sells through more specialized sites as a way to garner more traffic. Those sites include Greatglovez.com, Greatparasolz.com, Greatscarvez.com and others.

“The Internet is about niche marketing,” Kiesling said. “That’s why we’re successful on the Internet.”

While the majority of GreatLookz’s customers are middle-age women, their backgrounds are as diverse as the company’s product lineup.

They include members of the Red Hat Society, a national organization of women who wear red hats, and stores that sell gothic clothing items.
Article Source: http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0203biz-greatlookz0203.html

Tags: Internet Marketers, Predictions

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 12:49 am and is filed under Internet Marketers, Predictions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.