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| Cottage industry selling to the world |
January 4, 2005 |
By Karen Hall
Half of Canadian small businesses are not investing in Internet technologies.
Some think it’s too complicated, others that it’s too expensive.
Here’s one small business that gave away soap to get online. It now sells its product around the world.
Running a small business located between Eganville and Foymount, Ont., is not an easy thing. The area is pretty and a great place to live, but if you sell specialty and heritage soaps there are simply not a lot of people strolling by your outlet every day.
Eight years ago, that was the dilemma faced by Laurie Stephenson and her husband Jack.
In 1995, Stephenson started to make soap as a hobby. Her factory was the kitchen of their farm, and she used a cook stove and rain water. She then saw a television show about making soap using goat milk and decided to try that. She started giving little pieces of her soap to different people — anybody and everybody who would try it, she said. Then one day a neighbour finally refused to take the soap without paying for it and Stephenson’s business — Opeongo Mountain Meadow Soap — was born.
“I was making small batches and giving small pieces away to different people to try,” Stephenson said. “It got to the point that everybody really liked the soap. So technically on paper it was a business in 1996.”
But the market in their isolated rural area was tiny so the couple turned to the Internet, even though at the time they literally didn’t know how to turn on a computer.
Today, Opeongo is a busy and profitable company with a global customer base.
STEPPING ONLINE
To get started, Stephenson read and researched, and visited small business centres. “I would take a few little pieces of soap with me into the centres,” she said.
“Every time I wanted to do something which I thought was a little adventurous for me, I would go in and ask them if they thought it would work. The feedback was always very positive.”
It was then time to create a Web site, and they hit their first hurdle: the couple didn’t own a computer. So they traded for one with a neighbour.
“Jack did some work for him and we got their computer,” she said. “And it was not a really good computer.”
But Stephenson managed to learn what she needed to on her own, and when she had questions she asked a friend. “I was very lucky, and maybe I’m a fast learner but it wasn’t hard for me.”
The couple enlisted the services of a few friends who knew a little HTML, and their first Web site was built. Because the couple didn’t have a lot of money, Stephenson gave them soap in exchange for their assistance.
“For me it was good because people could see the business was growing and I think it was satisfying to them,” she said.
“And it encouraged me to go forward.”
The actual process of getting a Web site created and online was neither a long nor difficult process, Stephenson said.
“We would all sit down for a few hours every week until it was decided that…it looked good and was efficient,” she said.
“And we didn’t really find there were any obstacles.”
As the business grew they decided it was time to hire a professional Web master.
That was four years ago and the Web design and order-entry process is now quite efficient.
“I sit down with the Web master once a year, but he (regularly) updates the pages as I give him information throughout the year through e-mails,” she said. “He has set it up so I can see the orders in my inbox.
I then go onto my home page on an administration site and orders are there.
I click on them and customers’ payment information comes up.”
WORLD MARKETPLACE
Today, the company’s soap can be found in many local stores, as well as in Ottawa, Quebec, Kingston, Winnipeg, the province of B.C. and stores in Japan.
None of that, Stephenson said, would be true without the Web.
“[Without it] I would have to drive to the stores,” she said. “With e-commerce, we can go anywhere.
“We wouldn’t have all this business without being online,” Stephenson said.
“A lot of it is even just the introduction (to our company). Somebody will say, ‘I saw your pages on the Web.’”
Opeongo’s Web site offers a mailorder form, a shopping cart through which customers can pay online using a secure system, a wholesale price list, plus all the usual product and company information.
And with the shift to online commerce, the business is also moving away from retail and towards wholesale.
“It doesn’t pay for me to do the retail as much as the wholesale now,” she said.
“Wholesale opens up a whole new area.
After eight years…we’ve definitely seen an increase in wholesale sales. It’s increasing every year.”
WHAT WORKS FOR HER
Stephenson’s success stems from hard work and a willingness to jump into online commerce. For other Canadian small businesses looking to make that leap, Stephenson said start with research but make sure to do only what feels right for your business.
“I was always told not to do my home page in black, for example, but I really like it in black,” she said. “So I think it’s really important to do what you like. To me a lot of Web sites are boring, and maybe they’re more efficient, but I really like looking at my pages.”
Stephenson also said customers expect a quick response in the online world. She checks e-mail every day for orders to fill.
Today, she and her husband sell 25 different types of soap in various sizes. Now, though, Jack makes the soap and Laurie manages the business side, as well as the wrapping and packaging of all the orders.
The soap is still made in the couple’s kitchen and that is unlikely to change. “I know how to get really big, but I don’t want to,” Stephenson said. “I want to keep it personal.
I want to keep it in our home.”
Web soap
www.opeongo.com
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