Dealing with Major Market Shifts: Aphrodite’s CEO Jonathan Foltz (Part 1)

Jonathan has had to shepherd his jewelry e-commerce venture through the pandemic first. Then came the Apple iOS battle with Facebook which has rendered small merchants ineffective on the Facebook platforms.

Read how a scrappy, creative entrepreneur is managing all the curveballs thrown at him.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Jonathan Foltz: My father and mother were doing a lot of traveling. My dad was in the oil business. My mom was a tourist guide that he had met. They were traveling to South Korea. I was supposed to be born in South Korea. They changed the path to Canada, and I was born in Toronto. At a very young age, I started to travel a lot. I had to learn how to socialize because I was moving so much.

That led me to Miami where I was just obsessed with basketball. Then in 9th grade, I got cut in the first round. It was detrimental to me. I remember going home and thinking, “If I’m not good at basketball, what am I good at?” It spurred my entrepreneurial journey. When CD burns had just come out, kids were learning how to get music from the internet. This was before any laws had come out. This was before they started cracking down on this.

I got my hands on a CD that was coming out in two weeks. Our parents didn’t even know about this. It was so powerful that we can have music in our hands. I ended up making a bunch of CDs. I went to the extent of even designing the cover myself and putting everything on there. I took it to school. The first thing that ends up happening is I sell every single one so quickly. It became such a phenomenon that the whole school was selling that same CD the next day. It was so astronomical. That’s what got me started in entrepreneurship.

Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking?

Jonathan Foltz: This was probably around 1998. This was before the boom and bust.

Sramana Mitra: Did you go on to college?

Jonathan Foltz: I started to do all kinds of side businesses. I tried all kinds of different things. I tried selling baseball and basketball cards. I loved them. My first real venture was right out of high school where I opened up a pet shop. I opened it with one of my buddies in the middle of the mall.

This guy told me, “You should come check out my kiosk because I’m making good money.” It was just a kiosk. This guy was making more money than a real retail store when I did the math. This was pretty interesting. It was reptiles. We needed some bearded dragons at Christmas time.

Around Christmas time, a little 12-year-old kid came over with his mom. He had 20 little bearded dragons. These usually go for $20. You sell them to the public for $69. So he handed me the bearded dragons. I gave him the $400. He was like, “This is for $100. It’s Christmas time. They’re in high demand. If you don’t want them, I’ll sell them to someone else.” I was being hustled by a 12-year-old kid.

You just can’t not have the bearded dragon, so I ended up buying them. That got me into reptile breeding. I was one of the first in that world that went very hardcore into the internet. I started figuring out how to do a website. I started an eBay channel selling a bunch of pet products and ended up just realizing that I could be at home in my boxers making money. That’s what spurred me more into the digital realm.

There were a couple of books that changed my whole perspective. One of them was The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. It’s a beautiful book. It showed you that the world is now flattening and everyone has a chance to do big things unlike in the past. The other book was 4-Hour Work Week.

I was tired of these graphics guys taking advantage. This is where Digital Age, my marketing agency, started. From there, I gave people a tremendous amount of value. It’s basically arbitrage and getting people to do it overseas. That’s what spurred me into the digital agency world.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Dealing with Major Market Shifts: Aphrodite's CEO Jonathan Foltz
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