Business is selling unique patented products online as well as wholesale to small gift shops. The products are of a personalized gift nature.
Three partners bought the business from its founder about two years ago. Previous owner did a great job designing and patenting a unique product. He found a manufacturer in China and stocked a warehouse. He also succeeded at selling the product to about 300 stores across North America, including Hallmark. Because of personal / family reasons he had to sell the business.
In the last two years the following changes / improvements have been done:
• minimized the overhead by giving up the warehouse and moving into a low cost storage
• re-designed the Web site from scratch to make the ordering process easier and the landing pages clearer, which dramatically lowered the bounce-back ratio
• created an online affiliate program
• started sending a monthly newsletter with rotating promotions - this has helped the customer retention rate
• implemented a monthly contest which we use as a viral marketing tool, as well as a way of growing the mailing list for our newsletter
• designed a program for work-at-home moms to sell the product as a fundraiser
• hosted numerous contest giveaways on different blogs
The current partners lack marketing expertise, advertising funds and time to introduce the product to wider audience to its full potential.
What is for sale:
1. Merchandise. Exact stock counts will be provided to interested parties.
2. Web site. It is a heavily customized shopping cart solution with a comprehensive back-end management panel that allows for coupon codes, gift certificate codes, sales on certain products or groups of products, shipping discounts with minimum order amounts and so forth. Online product designer is integrated into shopping cart. Monthly contest is integrated into shopping cart.
3. List of current customers with contact info - both retail (Web site customers) and wholesale (about 300 stores).
4. Patent for the product.
The merchandise is physically located in Illinois but if the offer is right shipping can be arranged. |
