This time around, we interview James Grasty from TheBroBrasket. He shares with us his insights on ecommerce as well as the story behind the success of the company that he started with his peers. He has actually started numerous other businesses until he finally found success in his first ecommerce venture. With that, let’s get started.
How did the TheBroBasket website start? What inspired the idea of gifts for men?
It’s actually a pretty cool story. Our MBA Entrepreneurship class at CSU Channel Islands was creating a business from scratch as our class project and the basic idea started as “If women get flowers, then what should men get? A bucket of beer!” which in 2013 was not really a thing you could send. A few of us liked the idea so much we turned it into a real business after the class ended in 2014 launching out website in December of that year. We started out with just a few gifts at higher price points, and a bucket of beer of course, but over time with customer feedback we added a bunch different gifts and made our old ones better. Now here we are almost 5 years later humming along, its been an interesting journey.
What are some of the major challenges for TheBroBasket?
Shipping gift baskets full of glassware, glass bottles, food, and accessories AND having it arrive in one piece looking good has been very challenging. It has taken us a lot of time and effort to get it right and things still break on occasion but from where we started we are light years ahead.
What has been the biggest challenge for the company?
Getting initial funding from venture, angel, or any kind of investment was a pretty big flop. We had to pile our own money together with some friends and family and launch the business. Honestly, we would have not made it out of our first year without our friend and fellow former classmate investing $10k. That helped us get us through ’til we received our SBA loan. Once we had the funding from that we were off to the races and were really able to start properly growing the business.
What are your tips on how to make a business startup a successful one?
We, as my above example shows you, either be well funded or run a tight ship and really boot strap till you have proof of concept and get off the ground, or both! As someone that started over half a dozen businesses, I would say there are a number of things that I have learned from my successes and my failures.
- Get proof of concept and figure out if there is actually a market for the product(s) you are trying to sell before you go all in.
- Have management level experience in the business you are trying to start – I have gone as far as getting a job with a competitor to try and see how they operated.
- Properly plan, like really get in the nitty-gritty – I can’t tell you how many business I have failed at and seen other crash just because they, and I, didn’t do the proper planning and market research before launching the business
- Be willing to pivot – we launched the business as a gift basket delivery service, we quickly realized that was not a viable idea and pivoted to a full eCommerce company.
- Be consistent & persistent – pressure over time will always yield you results.
- With that being said, know when to fold your hand – I have seen too many people waste countless years and money on businesses and products that suck, just kill it and move on!
How do you think eCommerce has changed over the past 10 years?
Well, I have only been in the game for 5 years, but I did try to start an ecommerce company way back in 2002. I realized I didn’t know enough coding to launch on 3dCart and had to move on. So I would say that the ease with which one can launch an ecommerce business has been one of the biggest changes. You don’t have to know the first thing about coding/programming, and hell you don’t even need that much money. The biggest downside to all that is its so easy now you get a lot of wannabees that think its easy to become some ecommerce stud, and yeah its easy to launch a business online but its still hard as ever to make that business succeed.
What do you think is the future of ecommerce?
I feel like it will continue to get easier and easier to own and operate a business in the ecom world, which is great for society as a whole, but means more competition for us that are already here and more expensive advertising. Amazon will continue to get bigger and Google will do the same, so hedging your bets and diversifying marketing channels and income streams is always a good idea.
How did you get started with WooCommerce?
Funny story; we paid way too much money to a local “website development” company that gave us a terrible website that I could probably make in a day these days, and it happened to be on WooCommerce. Thinking back, we should have been on a hosted solution like Shopify or BigCommerce, but it was what it was. It worked out for the best when we redeveloped the entire site and relaunched it less than 6 months later. We utilize a ton of customization and have customizable products and we would struggle to have these unique product offerings on a hosted solution.
What advice can you offer for aspiring ecommerce entrepreneurs?
Come up with or find a really cool and or unique idea and build a product/brand or service around that. We are looking at acquiring another ecommerce company and I really get annoyed when I find these companies that are just practicing retail arbitrage and/or selling cheap crap from China. Amazon and others are just going to get bigger and they will eat those people’s lunch sooner than later! So your best bet is to have a unique private labeled product and a solid brand that you can stand behind, that will help you become successful and stand the test of time.
Some website owners might think that a good theme just needs to look good. Well, that’s not wrong but it’s also not entirely correct. You need to know how to check if a theme is a good theme for your WooCommerce store. Here’s a checklist to help you decide if a WordPress theme is good for your WooCommerce Store.
Update frequency is a good sign of a solid WordPress theme. It shows that the developers are continuously making it better by addressing bugs and other security threats. Similarly, check if the developer is active in public forums. This is a good sign that you will get answers if you are ever met a problem.
Simplicity is the epitome of great design. Select a proper theme that matches the nature of your e-commerce store and will appeal to your target market. If you are planning for a content rich website, go for a more formal look with good typography for enhanced readability. If you are selling products for kids, you can be more playful with the design. Spend some time researching for a theme that addresses your needs. Consider the aspects mentioned above and decide if this is the theme for you.
Storefront
The 
As a business owner, you may struggle with 
The system you create becomes the tool everyone uses to get the job done in a way it needs to get done. Working on your business means you need to test and develop these systems to make sure they produce your desired result. When you have an efficient system in place, you’re mostly assured of the quality of work, and that business continues even if the people come and go. Training new staff becomes that much easier.
Even if you love working in your business, chances are there isn’t enough time to get everything done on your own. This is especially true as your business continues to grow. Hire reliable, technology-savvy staff and those with technical skills that match your needs. Doing so will help you better manage your time so you can focus on managing and growing your business.
With routine and technical tasks delegated to staff, you can devote more time in managing and developing your business. This means you can focus on 
While it’s understandable to be very busy at work, especially in the early stages of your business, you also need to know when and how to effectively delegate. Prioritize your core functions as a business owner and focus on growing your business. Set up systems and tools to maintain consistent, quality results for routine activities. Outsource technical and other non-income-generating functions. These actions will help you better achieve a work-life balance. Spend more time with your family and friends and go on much-needed vacations.
I recognize the opportunity cost of your time and I wholeheartedly believe in delegating as much as possible. But this 3 hours is not one of those times, the reality is it will take someone else much longer than you to do this because the information is already in your head. If you can allocate just a few hours of your time you will end up with a website brief worth 1000’s of dollars.
The very start of the website blueprint is to identify why you have or want a website in the first place. Your website should be the core of your marketing, not a separate entity. As such, your website objectives need to be the core of your business objectives.
You probably already have some sort of visual branding such as a logo with a color scheme and brand or trading name. It will be a wise investment to spend 30 minutes looking at these and assessing if they still fit the business objectives you are trying to achieve.
Involved in what industry/business
Your contact page is the page your customer sees after they have made a significant mental shift in their decision making process. The moment they click on the contact page they become more invested in you and your brand.
They still won’t spend as much time as you think, or want, so use of sub-headings and thumbnail images is critical. 90% of people won’t read the body copy. It needs to capture the viewers’ attention in a matter of seconds. This is achieved by allowing the photos to tell the story.
Use this opportunity to go deeper into establishing your position in the market. Review the answers to your questions from the positioning exercise and back this position up here.
It is estimated that over half of website visitors will be viewing your site first from a mobile device. If your website is not “responsive” to all screen sizes you could be losing important leads before you even begin.
Luke Skywalker was living a simple life as a farmer on the planet Tatooine. He knew there was more opportunity out there in the universe and through a series of events he was called by a message from the princess. At first he resisted, but then his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi showed up and guided him.
The 5-10 pre-written automated emails are called email auto responders. They are not “Buy Now”. Like dating, we are asked in for “coffee” at some stage, but usually not the first date. And it’s always better to be asked than to ask.
Google’s business model is to return the most relevant search results so people keep using them to search online. Google is very good at correctly assessing the most relevant websites and have hundreds of criteria to determine their rankings.
You can assist Google by basically labelling your content. Everything on your site can be labelled by what’s called meta data. Meta data is not visible to the user, but helps Google web crawlers identify what your site is about. All good website platforms like WordPress have this baked in to make it very easy to add “meta data” to any page, image or link on your site.
The most important social networks to consider are:
The main purpose of creating a social media presence is to build and nurture relationships with your existing and previous customer base. Your social media profiles and pages can serve as a means for people to contact you and you can and should promptly reply to these inquiries as well.
If this is the first time you have read this, congratulations. Now go through it again and invest just three hours to build a really solid foundation for what is to become your website strategy.
