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It was more of a we got these other things going on and this might be some nice extra income. We had no way of making them at that point in time. So my friend who owned the frame shop, I had to go to him and say hey that keepsake you made for me for that wedding gift, he said. So that was how it started. Thank you for seeing letters wherever you went. Good thing you took pictures. So when you first did it, you started getting some people asking and you got like those first ten orders, did you go around and start telling people about it more or anything like that?
How did you start to ramp it up just a little bit locally like that? We kind of had to do that first and we realized we needed to give people more choices. So people would start coming to our house. So that was kind of how it went. My buddy who owns the frame shop also has a Hallmark store. He owns a Hallmark franchise where he has got three or four Hallmarks so people would go there as well. It kind of lays the frame out for you and the pictures will pop up based on the word that you choose.
So tell me the timeframe on that though. You went and people were coming over. When did the website actually come about from when you first did the keepsake for the wedding. So August, September, October, about four months before and we had a programmer that we had already had on staff with another business that we owned and we just started diverting his time over to this website. So he probably put in hour days for a couple weeks straight and we would be talking sometimes in the middle of the night to kind of edit the website and make sure it was what we wanted.
Even then, when I look back on it, it was so rudimentary compared to where it is today. We had a business that my wife and I owned that was basically related to advertising in the automobile industry. She originally worked for a company out of Detroit, which obviously is like auto headquarters of the U. We had done that but we could see the trend was going in a direction kind of away from banner ads and email marketing. The consumers were becoming more savvy so the real estate was getting less valuable.
The company that we represented actually ended up selling and so there was really, at that point in time, we had a couple years worth of revenue that we could live off of, but eventually that business was gone. So we had to do something. This just happened to be what it was. How did you know? So it was about a year after we sold our first one. The reason it became the main thing was, you know, I was outsourcing to my friend who owned the frame shop and so he was still building everything and he came to me one day and said … My nose is itching so I apologize I keep doing this. Every once in awhile you have to itch your nose.
I think he was probably working out of about, the framing area that he had, he had four or five employees that worked back there and he was working out of an area that might have been about 10 feet wide by about 40 feet long. I mean what if it is only 75 a month?
Once I got my first little place set up which was in this really dingy basement with no heat. Anyway, I was doing it all by myself and all the numbers, I still have the same number that I had back then but now I have a call service that answers all the calls, but back then they all forwarded to my cell phone. So I am answering every phone call talking to every single customer answering every single email. How did you end up getting that catalog gig?
For someone who has a product right now, what would they have to go through? Their job is to assess products. Hey could you tell me the buyer or the merchandiser in charge of couches or whatever it happens to be, wall art in our case. The size of the catalog can make a difference too. What did you do for that first one? Did you just track someone down to get that very first one? I know what we did. Then I got a call within about 24 hours from that person.
I love it, I want to put you in and then we started the negotiation of price and then I quickly lost my enthusiasm, because I realized I was paying more to get them made than they were going to pay me to make them. What did you do then though? He said I can see your drive and I can see how much you care about this and all those things. Even though he knew he was kind of cutting his own throat at that situation, because he was making nice money off of us, but he knew, I think, as long as we can make the pie bigger then his slice could become bigger, even though he was kind of in the short run making it a smaller slice for himself.
In fact, instead of him giving me space, I now give him space. He still owns all of his shops but I give him space in my factory because he builds all of our wood frames for us. He fronts all the money for the wood, which is great, but he likes it because he makes a lot of what they call ready-made frames like right behind you on your wall there I see a frame. We play poker together and we do things together. You started doing that, you started doing stuff on your own. Take us until the next few years.
How did you start growing it? We had a couple articles in our local newspaper about our business that were timed such that it was right in the gift buying frenzy and this catalog started going crazy around this time. Both of our catalogs that we were in. So I ended up having to hire maybe 8 or 9 people. I mean my parents were helping, my in-laws were helping.
Everybody was on the payroll that was of age. Then I hired just some people from the community. I was on a radio show locally and probably got 4 or 5 perspective employees from that and hired a couple of them. So in , really early on in we actually had gotten invited to the Oprah Show in the audience.
I drug her here. I think I just must not have looked like her standard fan, which I found out was the case when I got in there because it was mostly women. There was some older guys with their wives that were bringing them there and they probably were, their wives probably dragged them there but in my case I was happy to be there.
At one point, she comes to so you took the day off work to bring your wife here that was nice. So it gave me a chance to promote. Anyway so we leave and go home. Within about, we sent a keepsake to the lady that got us the tickets as a thank you and we thought it would be a nice thank you. Within a couple of weeks the lady that had called me up onstage called me.
She got my phone number somehow. She might have called my number but it got to me, because I was still answering them all. We were really wanting to get on the show as small business owners or something. Well we were not that at that point but we were doing well. The business is kind of going a little bit. I mean Paula Deen was on that show. Ang Sally who was the wedding dress making was on that show. So we were not there but you will be in the special audience. Oprah may or may not talk to you on camera.
Well we quickly learned that special audience was basically like the regular audience.
You just come in a different door. Instead of waiting in like this holding room with these giant flat screen TVs of all these Oprah shows playing over and over with other people you come in a special door with like 10 people.
Well we brought a keepsake up to give to Oprah but they confiscated. When you come in there is like some security, of course, and you have to give them your ID. So we just left it with them figuring worse come to worse somebody has got a nice keepsake sitting there that says Oprah.
But she kind of hung around and taking questions. She probably gave about an hour of her time extra to the audience after the show. But she was just being really gracious and my wife is ribbing me, stand up, raise your hand. So I raise my hand. I mean you were noticed the last time. I knew as soon as I raised my hand she was going to call me.
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I appreciate you having us to your show. Would you be willing to accept it? Oprah gets these like giant gleaming scissors brought out to her.
You only see them in the movies. Somebody was probably shining them before they came out. So they bring the scissors out and she cuts the ribbon off delicately at the perfect angle and she opens it right there in front of everybody.
She really was genuinely, I think, she liked it a lot. She started asking us all these questions about it to the point where somebody behind me is muttering I wish these guys would just sit down. Every time I tied to sit down she asked me to stand up again. So they all turned the cameras off. Could you make one for me?
We told some friends and family, because it was kind of a cool thing like hey guess what Oprah bought this from us to give to Tom and Kate. Then they called us like a couple weeks later and she wanted to make another one for her niece. Well they had gone down the roster of companies that appeared on that Oprah show that day, because we had like a minute video segment, but we were still on the website which was great.
They had gotten to some people a few ahead of us who kind of said have you talked to Brad and Jera yet? People magazine eventually found out and so they put us in there. It lends to some credibility. So what did it do for sales? I mean once you were on and everybody sort of knew that, did you see a huge spike or what did it look like? In October we got put in there. We also were on the Rachel Ray show in early October. Then my wife had worked herself into a spot on the Martha Stewart show where she opened the show one day for about eight minutes.
How do you do that? Number one, how did you get on Rachel ray and number two, how did you get on the Martha Stewart show? Rachel Ray was actually our PR company. They sent our product to Rachel Ray producers who I think one of them had a relationship with because they were both out of New York City and they put us on. But with the Martha Stewart, this is crazy. My wife saw a story in Martha Stewart Living magazine and the story was featuring one of her long-time friends and I believe like maybe her executive producer or maybe her editor of her magazine. It was somebody who was high up in her organization and there was a story on her and her family.
Yes, I think she found it on Zaba search and looked her address up, sent keepsakes to both of her sons who were young teens, maybe 14 and Well that lady called my wife directly within about a week of getting those keepsakes. So within a couple days and said how much they loved them and how much her sons ran upstairs and hung them in their rooms immediately. So anyway my wife is talking to her and she is like, she might have been her executive producer.
Somebody else pipes up in the meeting and says that was the company that I told you about like six months but you guys all shot me down. So we had been trying to get on through other avenues and then that happened. So when those two came together it was just a matter of what show can we get you on and how do we get you out here.
So that was great for business. What did sales do? Do you even remember sort of after each one of these shows like what it looked like? Television shows are interesting.
When we were on the Donny Deutsch show, it featured us, the two of us. But with the Rachel Ray show they solely featured our product and it went crazy. It was just nuts. So there was a huge spike immediately but then that kind of fell off. I have a transaction number from Paypal and obviously my credit card was charged weeks ago. I understand and realize that many deals sell out very fast, but why can't you do anything with your system to make ti show that the items are no longer available? Can't it show it automatically?
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