Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture to $12 Million: Sawyer Twain CEO Chris Turner (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The two of you launched this thing around 2012?

Chris Turner: Around 2015.

Sramana Mitra: Did you take inventory or consignments?

Chris Turner: Will was the main distributor for Plank & Hide. Everything was being imported either from China or Vietnam. Plank & Hide is still one of my best partners to this day. They’ve very very designer-looking game room furniture. They made my job very easy. They were somewhat new to the billiards space too. They weren’t opposed to giving Will and me the opportunity to optimize the brand online.

Sramana Mitra: Did you have to buy the inventory?

Chris Turner: Of course. Will drop shipped on my behalf. Our relationship has changed over the years. Initially, he would buy the inventory. That was the model. I still have that model in place for different brands that I work with.

Sramana Mitra: You did not have to finance the inventory?

Chris Turner: No, which was very lucky. I started with $5,000 to $8,000. We didn’t go full force in PPC. We started piggybacking on channels that would take a margin from us. Etsy was great. Wayfair is currently one of our biggest partners.

Sramana Mitra: Wayfair operates a marketplace as well.

Chris Turner: Wayfair, today, is one of my biggest partners. We do close to $80,000 to $100,000 a month.

Sramana Mitra: Etsy and Wayfair.

Chris Turner: House.com was the biggest breadwinner in the first year.

Sramana Mitra: You got traffic from those and you had this partner who was dropshipping. That helped you bootstrap this business. Were you a solo entrepreneur?

Chris Turner: I was initially. It was an absolute grind. I was working 60 to 70 hours a week. Once the brand started to take off on the platforms, it was time to build out Sawyer Twain direct.

Sramana Mitra: How long after you started was that?

Chris Turner: Probably around six to seven months.

Sramana Mitra: It wasn’t that long. What revenue did you reach before starting the direct e-commerce channel?

Chris Turner: We started it anyways because you got to have a landing page to exhibit your product. When we started investing into it, it was probably six to eight months.

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to get to a million dollars a year in revenue?

Chris Turner: Probably 20 months. It happened pretty fast.

Sramana Mitra: 2017 was when you were about at a million dollars.

Chris Turner: Right.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Chris Turner: A lot of things. A lot of people who didn’t want to do business with us initially because they wanted to protect the brick and mortar realized that they had to be online too. They reached out to me. We’ve got private label products. I started my own line. They’re being imported from Vietnam and China too.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to 2017. You are at one million dollars in revenue. Your channels are producing. Can you be more precise about what happens next? I know a lot of things happened. What were the highlights of 2018?

Chris Turner: Exponential growth. In 2018, we must have done $6 million. We made a huge leap because a lot of these people were still behind on e-commerce.

Sramana Mitra: More brands were coming to you to have an online presence.

Chris Turner: Invest in Sawyer Twain direct. Get as many partners. That was what it was. Then developing our product.

Sramana Mitra: You were no longer a solo entrepreneur in 2018.

Chris Turner: Yes.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture to $12 Million: Sawyer Twain CEO Chris Turner
1 2 3