Welcome!
Welcome to this e-commerce business success story! In this profile, we interviewed Jay Perkins, the owner of Living Fit – an online provider of fitness equipment, at home workouts and courses for trainers (view more at www.living.fit).
Our hope is that you find this interview to be enlightening and inspiring as you seek to start and grow your very own online brand!
Jay Perkins Interview
Thank you for joining us for this e-commerce business success story! We’d like to start by getting an understanding of your backstory. How did you come to own your business?
I was working in e-commerce, selling e-commerce software so I learned a good bit about the industry in order to have intelligent conversations with customers. I kicked around different ideas with my co founders and after about a year we decided on a concept and got to work. We made orders from suppliers, set up an e-commerce website, hired a marketing company and got started.
Terrific! Now, this article is about profiling successful e-commerce businesses. So – can you share your top 3 keys to running a successful online brand?
I think you need to 1) think of your products like organisms that need to evolve and adapt over time so you can stay ahead of competitors and build a brand that customers are into. 2) I also think you need to quickly adapt different ways of marketing to see what works. Any form of marketing that people have success with over time will be adapted by others and lose its effectiveness, so you must be open to trying new marketing tactics and do more of the ones that work. 3) No matter how good your product is, it will be viewed as a commodity by most prospective customers. You need to build raving fans through product quality and the experience customers have with your brand either through the content you put out and your customer service. Every CS interaction is actually a sales opportunity to bring more business through repeat buyers and referrals.
Excellent. Now, I’m sure it hasn’t always been that easy. Can you tell a story about one challenge, setback, or mistake that you’ve had to overcome on the road to success? How can others learn from your mistakes?
We had plenty along the way. When we first started importing we had no experience. So we received our share of bad batches of products with no recourse from overseas sellers. We had to adapt by implementing new methods of protection along the way like video inspections, inspectors, not paying full balance until receiving products and building relationships. We became very good at sourcing products and having suppliers do exactly what we wanted so we could sell a premium product.
Thanks for that. Now – we want to know what’s next! What new initiatives are you rolling out at your business and what results are you hoping to see?
We are expanding our workout selection to have new forms of workouts ranging from bodyweight to almost any piece of equipment you can imagine. We hope to see results by creating life changing experiences for customers in the results they get from our plans.
Sounds exciting! Any final words of advice for our readers?
Everything will most likely take longer and cost more than you think, so plan for that and don’t give up if you are seeing progress.
Brilliant! We want to thank you for participating in today’s interview. Hopefully our readers agree that there is a lot to be learned from your brand’s story. What links can our readers use to follow along with your journey?
