Sramana Mitra: What was your team building strategy?

Chris Turner: At first, you just want to get people to be as passionate about the business as you are. It takes some time to realize that that’s not going to be the case. First, it was challenging. I have my own internal flaws. I could be a perfectionist. I don’t want to say micromanager, but, for the lack of a better word, I could be very anal on certain things. We rotated a handful of people.

Sramana Mitra: How many people did you have?

Chris Turner: We’re still relatively small. At the highest point, I had nine people.

Sramana Mitra: In 2018?

Chris Turner: 2019. In 2018, we had around five or six.

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you found a niche that is completely underserved.

Chris Turner: You are spot on. There is a lot of luck in this. If I wanted to get into furniture, that’s saturated.

Sramana Mitra: Right. Everything is saturated these days. It’s not easy to find a niche that is open.

Chris Turner: There was a lot of luck involved. It hadn’t been monopolized yet.

Sramana Mitra: The fact that you were able to dropship also saved you a lot of need for capital. You were able to bootstrap this.

Chris Turner: I couldn’t have done it by myself. I’m really thankful for Will and Plank & Hide.

Sramana Mitra: What does that do to the margins? You were operating with no inventory. Everything was dropshipped. What kind of margin were you working with?

Chris Turner: You’re looking at 30%. The same goes for our dropshippers. They incur different fees. If you’re on a marketplace, they take fees too, which can be 15% to 18%.

Sramana Mitra: When you factor in your operating cost with a 30% margin, how profitable is this? How do you need to put in on the frontend for this to be an interesting business?

Chris Turner: Today, we’ll wrap up our best year in business. The year before was a good year too. We attribute it to COVID.

Sramana Mitra: That went in your favor.

Chris Turner: That was big. We definitely took off in COVID, but we ran into logistical issues. There were eight to 10 months when we couldn’t get containers. Everybody had that predicament.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you now in terms of revenue?

Chris Turner: We’re just under $12 million.

Sramana Mitra: How does that split up? You said you had these channels that were producing. How much direct are you doing?

Chris Turner: Sawyer Twain direct is 85% of our business. It’s the breadwinner. We’re aggressive there.

Sramana Mitra: Can you double-click down on advertising and marketing? What kind of advertising works for your niche?

Chris Turner: Our biggest is PPC. Native advertising.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of your revenue is generated by Google PPC?

Chris Turner: A lot. I would say 40% or 50%. We invest in SEO. It’s not dead.

Sramana Mitra: That’s played in your favor. You found a niche that was underserved in every dimension. People were not shipping pool tables online and the traffic that was there was not being used or advertised against. That’s another problem with niches right now. Keywords are expensive to buy.

Chris Turner: They are.

Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else you want to share in your journey that is worth learning from?

Chris Turner: Still building.

Sramana Mitra: Yours is a textbook story of finding a niche which is completely underserved and then executing with SEO and PPC. And managing the inventory while negotiating dropship contracts. In an underserved niche, the vendors are willing to.

Chris Turner: True.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.