Bootstrapping with a Paycheck from Indiana: One Click Ventures Co-Founder Angie Stocklin (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me more about other businesses. How much did you buy the reading glasses for? How did that ramp?

Angie Stocklin: We ended up just buying a domain. It was not a great domain. It was readingglassesshopper.com. It’s a mouthful. I think we purchased it for $2,500. We were able to leverage a lot of the same suppliers to purchase reading glasses. There was a lot of synergy there.

Sramana Mitra: That one makes perfect sense. The diaper one didn’t make perfect sense.

Angie Stocklin: We had some missteps along the way. That’s for sure.

Sramana Mitra: How did you get rid of the diaper one?

Angie Stocklin: We sold it to a lady in Florida who was trying to quit her job and work from home.

Sramana Mitra: Were there there other such business that you acquired or brought into the portfolio?

Angie Stocklin: There were over 30 that we owned at some point in time.

Sramana Mitra: Walk us through that. In 2008, you bought the reading glasses?

Angie Stocklin: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What was the next one?

Angie Stocklin: Around the same time, we also launched silvertreats.com, which was a silver jewellery site, and sunproof.com, which was a brand that sold sun protective clothing. That one was interesting. We loved the opportunity of the fact that it wasn’t very competitive online. It was a hard one for us to market because I think somebody with the experience of needing sun protective clothing probably could have done a better job if they had an emotional attachment to the product. We were trying to treat it more as a transactional business.

Sramana Mitra: It didn’t work very well?

Angie Stocklin: It didn’t work very well for us.

Sramana Mitra: You got rid of that one as well?

Angie Stocklin: We held on to that for quite some time. I think we ended up shutting it down four or five years ago.

Sramana Mitra: How did the sunglasses and the reading glasses ramp? What kind of revenues do they generate now?

Angie Stocklin: A lot. We still have three brands right now and we’re focused strictly on eyewear at this point in time. Sunglass Warehouse happens to be one of the brands that we kept. The reading glasses business is now readers.com. We’ve kept that as well. We’ve recently added a prescription eyewear brand in late 2014.

Sramana Mitra: That’s it. The 30 that have come and gone have basically been weeded out and these are the three that have emerged as the winners.

Angie Stocklin: They were all nice. When we were able to divest those brands, we were able to use the money for growth of our current brand. We’ve owned handbags business to scarves business. It’s been an adventure for sure.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Bootstrapping with a Paycheck from Indiana: One Click Ventures Co-Founder Angie Stocklin
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