Company

When Fiona Richards became tired of working as a graphic designer for corporate clients, she decided to start her own business. That was over eight years ago.

Today, her wholesale greeting card business, Cartolina, sells worldwide to some of the most iconic retailers, like Harrods, Anthropologie, The Smithsonian, and The British Museum.

Cartolina now also sells directly to the consumer, via their online store, and has most recently opened a retail storefront in BC, Canada.

Shopify is proud to empower ecommerce entrepreneurs. We’re always happy to read about how entrepreneurs have found success selling online.

That’s why we’ve put up a page dedicated to featuring ecommerce success stories. And sometimes we get submissions so good that we have to feature it on this blog. So we reached out to one merchant to tell us more of her story.

Meet Raw Generation, a raw juice company based in Middletown, New Jersey. The entrepreneur behind it is 30-year-old Jessica Geier, a certified health coach.

Jessica started Raw Generation in 2012 with her dad, Bill. After initial struggles, she experimented with new sales channels – and took revenues from $8,000 in May, 2013 to $96,000 in July, 2013.

Here’s how she did it.

When Alex Ikonn and his wife Mimi realized how hard it was to find good hair extensions, they knew they had stumbled on a business opportunity. 

They took their problem and solved it by creating Luxy Hair - an extremely successful online store selling hair extensions for women.

And the coolest part? Their business is powered almost exclusively by tutorial-style YouTube videos.  

Their YouTube channel was created in 2010 and since then has amassed 1,474,246 subscribers and 173,657,125 total video views.

In other words, Luxy Hair is the perfect example of an audience enabled business that relies on a loyal community of fans instead of other channels like SEO and paid advertising. 

I caught up with Alex to find out how they took their site from idea to million dollar business. 

Have you heard of Crossfit? It's a strength and conditioning system that was started in 2000 and has become extremely popular in the fitness community.

It's also a movement a lot of smart entrepreneurs are building businesses around. 

One such person is Peter Keller, an entrepreneur from Texas and owner of FringeSport, a Crossfit and home gym equipment supplier.

Peter and I connected on Reddit over at /r/entrepreneur after the Beardbrand case study we published generated a lot of discussion over there. 

He introduced himself and shared his story (as well as some pretty incredible sales numbers for such a young company).

I got Peter to take us behind of the scenes of his extremely successful ecommerce business and show us how he achieved such phenomenal growth so fast. 

What do you get when you combine premium-quality, stylish sneakers at prices much lower than the competition? The answer is GREATS Brand - a new direct to consumer ecommerce shoe company that's aiming to disrupt the shoe industry by become the Warby Parker of footwear. 

Since launching in August, GREATS is off to a smashing start garnering attention from major media outlets like Forbes and men's fashion websites like GQ. 

The company is the brainchild of Ryan Babenzien and Jon Buscemi, two shoe industry veterans who saw an opportunity to create a new sneaker brand powered by ecommerce. 

We caught up with Ryan to find out more about how they've been so successful in such a short period of time.

Eric Bandholz has one serious beard.

And he's not alone. 

Just look around any major urban center these days and you'll see more beards and mustaches than ever before.

In fact, beards, mustaches, barber shops and male grooming in general are all undergoing a major renaissance right now. Especially with Movember in full swing.

Being a member of the beard community (and blogging about it), Eric was aware of this demand and realized he and his peers we're being underserved both from a content and product standpoint.

So he decided to create Beardbrand. 

Since launching the site this past January, Beardbrand has built a loyal community, has been featured in the New York Times and is off to a racing start. 

I was lucky enough to catch up with Eric and ask him some questions about how he's achieved his amazing success in such a short period of time. 

Imagine walking into a kitchen being used as a studio by a self-taught fashion designer who’s keen on transforming the look of women’s leggings from being hardly noticeable, to being the centre of attention.

Well that’s exactly what happened to Cameron Parker, a manager at an advertising agency, the day he met Black Milk Clothing founder James Lillis.

That was a few years ago, the early days of Black Milk Clothing, a stand out brand from Australia that today is a wildly successful company with a cult-like following any company would be jealous of. 

Since then, Parker has taken over the marketing reins for Black Milk to help take the business from kitchen table to global sensation. 

Started in 2009, the company began when Lillis sold his first legging for $10.  Today Black Milk Clothing is a multi-million dollar company that’s grown to 150 people and distributes its products globally.

And the best part? They’ve been able to do all that with a $0 marketing and advertising budget.  

I sat down with Cameron who heads up all the marketing and operations duties for the company to find out the company’s trade secrets. 

Parker travels the world for an annual tour in which the company facilitates meetups for its fan base so they can talk and rave about Black Milk Clothing in person.

In this interview, he breaks down the tactics that have worked for them, and what emerging ecommerce companies can do differently to gain the necessary traction to be successful.  

What do you get when you combine hi-tech performance fabrics with mens fashion? 

The answer is Mizzen+Main. 

Mizzen+Main is a fast growing men's apparel company that's on a mission to get rid of pit stains with their performance dress shirts. 

The company was started by co-founders Kevin Lavelle, Web Smith and Steven DeWitt who all came from different backgrounds but all bring something different to the table. Mizzen+Main has been featured in Fast Company and Forbes and has garnered key partnerships with NFL players and ESPN. 

We caught up with Kevin to find out how they came up with the idea, how they run their company and what advice they can offer to entrepreneurs looking to start an ecommerce business.