Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Brenda Boehler, CEO of Bellacor (Part 2)

Brenda Boehler: The opportunity exists in creating an experience for consumers to solve a problem online. We do that in many ways. Some online and some offline. I’ll speak about lighting specifically. If you’re a lighting retailer, it’s really important that you create really good content that makes it easy for consumers to understand scale and to understand lighting. We do that in a number of ways.

We do that through not only robust content on our product detail pages but also through buying guides within our blog so that people have the resources. We just help them become a problem solver for their home. The other thing that we invest in is training for our team members. There is an >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Devin Johnson, CEO of FirstMile (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: If you were starting a company today focusing on the domain of logistics in e-commerce, what kind of a company would you start? Where do you see open problems and white spaces?

Devin Johnson: When someone asks you when you’re a little kid what you want to do when you grow up, you never say you want to be in shipping. It’s not a sexy profession. Now that I’m so immersed in what I do, I feel very lucky. If I could pick any job in the world, it would probably be doing what I’m doing. I feel very fortunate. It’s hard for me to conceive doing anything else.

Sramana Mitra: The question I’m asking is more from the perspective of pointers and assistance to young >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Devin Johnson, CEO of FirstMile (Part 4)

Devin Johnson: When we pull back to the answer to your question, when a call comes in and Amazon says, “If you sell this product, the category for shipping you’ve determines means that this package has to be delivered in three to five days.” One of our clients can send a request for us saying, “FirstMile, ship this with your expedited product.”

Within milliseconds, our technology looks at where it’s going from and where it’s going to and it makes the determination based on historical data, who can get that data in three to five days, and who can do it for the least amount of money. Our technology knows that based on a package going in this network, it needs this label and it’s going to cost this much. Over the course of the >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Devin Johnson, CEO of FirstMile (Part 3)

Devin Johnson: Technology has really come a long way to help support that. It’s made things very efficient. That’s where it’s ended. You now have five carriers that say, “We’ll deliver your packages to these parts of the country and you have the software to make it really easy to use.”

Now you have five trucks that have to come to the same two dock doors everyday between 4PM and 6PM. You now have five different invoices that come in every single week. You now have five customer service departments to deal with. You now have five different claims departments to deal with.

Over the last six to eight years, things have become very efficient in the multi-carrier shipping technology environment and there >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Devin Johnson, CEO of FirstMile (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click down on those two points and explore them further. Obviously, there are smaller merchants who are selling on Amazon. Some of them are using Amazon’s own logistics capabilities.

To your point that they’re working with Amazon, yes they’re working with Amazon. What is it that you are bringing to the party where you are supplementing Amazon’s capabilities? What do you mean when you say work with Amazon? >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Devin Johnson, CEO of FirstMile (Part 1)

Logistics is becoming a key battleground for e-commerce companies, especially with Amazon setting a sky-high bar. Devin discusses the trends and where his company adds value.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to FirstMile and yourself.

Devin Johnson: I’m the Founder and CEO of FirstMile. We’re based out of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sramana Mitra: What is FirstMile’s business? >>>

Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Brand: Big Barker CEO Eric Shannon (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

We’ve talked about niche, proprietary e-commerce brands and how entrepreneurs are building businesses around different concepts. Eric shares the story of Big Barker, a dog bed for large dogs.

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?

Eric Shannon: I was born in Pennsylvania in a suburb about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I went to Temple University. I was a Finance major. After school, I moved to California and took a job in banking. I hated it and was terrible at it. I had a >>>

Can You Still Compete with Amazon in Niche eCommerce?

Can you still compete with Amazon in niche eCommerce?

You can, but the rules of the game have changed substantially.

Watch this inspiring 1 minute 33 seconds video and learn how:

>>>