AzStarNet
Sat, May 17, 2008
ez access
Subscriptions | Subscriber services
Custom clipper icon
Go Back
Dan Marshall does custom goldsmith work for the online business owned by Lisa Krikawa, who sits in the background. The Internet allowed Krikawa to make more than $1 million in sales this year while giving up the extensive traveling she used to do.
A.E. Araiza / Arizona Daily Star
Krikawa Jewelry Designs, www.krikawa.com
Lisa Krikawa, 37, began designing jewelry when she was fresh out of the University of Arizona in 1998. She traveled extensively to high-end, juried craft shows to market her product, and although she loved the work, she said she wasn't making a lot of money.
By 2002, she had been married 10 years and wanted to start a family, which meant she wouldn't be able to travel as much.
So she began doing research. And she found that three types of products sell well online: songs and other things you can download; low-priced books, vitamins and basic items; and high-end customized items such as cars, musical instruments — and jewelry.
"When there's a person who wants something customized just for themselves, they don't want to limit themselves to the town they're in," she said.
Krikawa made rough drafts of pages and got her husband, John, to create the Web site.
Five years later, she has three kids, nine employees, a new studio — and 10,000 hours invested in maintaining the site. If you Google "unique wedding rings" or "custom wedding rings," her site is near the top of the list.
"If a site becomes dead, you lose your spot for sure," she said.
For the first time, she passed $1 million in sales in a year — back in October.
Dainty Footings
www.daintyfootings.com
Northeast Side resident Susanna Potter was a ballet dancer in high school and college, so she was used to walking on her toes all the time.
"Walking on high heels was natural for me," she said. But it took a toll on her feet. "When I hit 40, I could not wear high-heeled shoes anymore."
She began looking into shoe cushions at local drugstores and found a material that seemed to not only cushion her feet but also absorb shock.
Potter ordered a bunch of the material and began experimenting with different shapes, eventually getting everything in line to launch a business marketing the shoe cushions for women who still wanted to wear fashionable shoes.
She launched the product — and the Web site — in October of last year, and business took off right away, she said.
"I don't think we could have launched Dainty Footings without the Internet," Potter said.
Because of all the initial tooling fees for the molds for her cushions, the company began turning a profit only about three months ago.
And although the Internet originally made up the bulk of her sales, now Potter finds that her wholesale business is picking up, so Web site sales are about 60 percent of her current business.
The Pecan Store/Green Valley Pecan Co.
www.pecanstore.com
A decades-old, family-run pecan-farming business might seem an unlikely Web entrepreneur, but Green Valley Pecan Co. launched its Web identity in the mid-1990s, when companies were just beginning to realize the pending importance of the information superhighway.
"We're a company that's always moved with the technology of the times and has always grown and been consistent with technology," said Deborah Walden-Ralls, project marketing manager. She's also the daughter of the owner, Dick Walden.
The company launched a redesigned version of its site — its third since the site inception — at the beginning of October and already is seeing improvement. Online sales traffic has doubled compared with the same period last year, Walden-Ralls said.
Online sales used to make up a small percentage of business; they now account for about half, she said.
Walden-Ralls said the most important aspects of keeping the Web site successful are ease of use for the customers and constantly making changes in the site to maintain high ranking on the search engines.
"We've played with it pretty hard, I would say," Dick Walden said. "We've kind of been down a road of learning."
Fumée Inc.
www.fumeeworld.com
Desert Christian High School alumna Heather Waibel Haddad graduated from the University of Arizona in 2005 and quickly discovered that her double major in German and political science was hard to parlay into a job.
She went to work for Buffalo Exchange, working directly with the founder and her husband, which inspired her to start her own business.
After graduating from business school in California, Haddad decided to start her own cigar company.
"One of the things my dad instilled in me is that I should do the things I love to do," she said.
Cigars had been her passion since she began smoking them at age 18, so she decided to make them her business as well.
Haddad and her partner, Ralph Piña, had grand visions of a cigar lounge with a Web component. In the end, however, they had a budget to launch a Web site, with the lounge to come later.
The partners are based in Austin, Texas, because tobacco taxes are relatively low there, Haddad said.
She uses a third-party company — as do Dainty Footings, Krikawa Jewelry and Green Valley Pecan — to process credit-card transactions, paying the company a flat fee plus a percentage of each transaction monthly.
Piña became a self-taught Web designer to get the site launched in October.
The initial investment in the site was "pretty modest," Haddad said. "We've definitely made that back, and we've only been open for less than three months now."
Haddad did a lot of advance marketing by establishing a presence in the online cigar community through message boards and podcasts. By the time her site was launched, she already had networked enough for word-of-mouth advertising to kick in.
While many online stores sell cigars only by the box, she said, she allows people to buy them individually and to mix and match their orders.
She includes handwritten thank-you notes.
"I try to keep it very classy and very personal," she said.

Business

online Arizona business

To work well, commercial Web site needs a good design, high visibility

By Shelley Shelton
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.05.2007
Some businesses just click for their customers.
Now that the commercial Internet has been around for a number of years, plenty of local — or local-bred — entrepreneurs have found ways to make the Web work for them.
Almost all say that running an online business is not a lot different from running a brick-and-mortar store as far as accounting and customer service are concerned.
But setting up an effective Web site can prove tricky, notes David-Michel Davies, executive director of the Webby Awards — which have been called "the Oscars of the Internet."
"In this day and age, Web presentation is crucial to a company's success. Web sites are now the face of a company — it is the first impression that a company makes on consumers," Davies wrote in an e-mail during a trip out of country.
The most important thing, he said, is to avoid bells and whistles when creating a site, because such things slow users down and prevent them from quickly and easily completing what they came to do.
But having a well-designed Web site is only part of the equation, said Urban Scurry, owner of Tucson SEO Solutions, which specializes in search-engine optimization. Scurry also teaches a workshop on search-engine optimization for the Arizona Small Business Association.
Such optimization will place a business high on a search engine's results list, he said.
For example, Scurry — who also has been in the housecleaning business for several years — has a housecleaning-tips blog that will be the first item you see if you were to Google certain search terms.
"Fifty percent of all purchases made in the United States begin on the Internet," he said. "Eighty-five percent of searchers never go beyond the first page of results. Fifty percent of searchers never go beyond the fourth or fifth result on the first page."
In other words, not only does a business need to be on the first page of search-engine results, but that business needs to be high on the page.
Changing the content frequently is "absolutely essential," he said. "I recommend to all my clients that they have a blog on their Web sites."
Davies said Web logs, or blogs, and video are good things to consider when setting up a Web site.
"Integrating a blog will give your site a life and voice of its own and help position your company as a trusted authority on issues important to your consumers," he said. "Video is a great way to engage visitors."
More profiles of online businesses / D2
● Contact reporter Shelley Shelton at 434-4086 or sshelton@azstarnet.com.
$1 Sunday delivery - Subscribe to the Arizona Daily Star
Go Back