Customer Story
How Gary Waterfield Turns His Passion into a Lifetime Business
It’s definitely not an understatement to say that Gary Waterfield is an avid cyclist. Besides participating in amateur races and cycle tours around the United States, Europe, Canada, and New Zealand, he has worked as a bike messenger, a bike shop assistant, and a general manager of a mountain bike company. His strong passion for cycling motivated him to create his first product: a Cargo Bag which is a combination of messenger bag and a briefcase.
This was introduced back in 1998 when bike messenger bags were just starting to creep into the mainstream. As he transitioned from bike messenger to business, the messenger bag’s large compartment was not functional for his needs, so he created a bag that had the popular messenger style with the functionality of a modern briefcase. He added pockets and compartments so that non-messengers can use it as a bag for work. It was a multi-purpose bag that worked – not just for him but for everyone.
We caught up with Aireen de Peralta, Chief Operating Officer of WaterField Designs, San Francisco, to find out more about their business process as well as their key strategies to stay on top of the competition.
Key strategy #1: What makes you decide to manufacture your product instead of sourcing for it?
There were 3 key reasons Gary wanted to keep manufacturing local:
- create a better customer experience by offering different sizes, colors, and options. If you outsource, this is hard to do since you need to meet minimum quantity requirements.
- control quality and make adjustments quickly. It’s very difficult to do this when you are using someone else’s facilities.
- quick time to market. It is easier to design, prototype, and go to production quickly when the entire process is at your fingertips.
Key strategy #2: How did you make your first sale?
The first sale was for the Cargo Messenger Bag back in 1998, during the DotCom era. The company sold a few a day – mostly through word-of-mouth to architects, graphic designers, and creative types looking for style and function. Based out of South Park in San Francisco, the center of tech activity at that time (it was dubbed Multimedia Gulch), Gary was able to observe and interact with his target customers to find out what their needs were.
The turning point came when the Director of MIT’s Multimedia Lab, a Cargo bag customer, contacted Gary for a good, quality sleeve for their laptops. They worked together to develop the Laptop Sleevecase using neoprene and ballistic nylon. Soon thereafter, Steve Jobs launched the titanium PowerBook in 2001 and Gary was able to quickly custom-fit the SleeveCase to fit it perfectly. First to market with a functional and stylish sleeve, Apple early adopters bought it, loved it, and spread the word on forums and blog posts. Sales took off.
The day after he sent out the first SleeveCase, Gary decided to check his computer to see how many orders came through (the fewer orders he had, the longer the bike ride for that day). He nearly had a heart attack when he saw so many orders that filled the page. Needless to say, he did not go bike-riding that day, or many days after that. Apple editors and reviewers contacted him to write up about the case because there weren’t too many people making anything specifically for the PowerBook. Up till today, many of our customers are Apple folks.
Key strategy #3: Is Shopify your first eCommerce platform?
We were using earlier eCommerce technologies that existed at the time when we started selling online in 1998. We had separate apps for the shopping cart, order management, customer relationship, inventory, shipping and etc. It was difficult maintaining all the different versions of these apps and making sure they worked together every time. Each app had its own reports and if we wanted a comprehensive view, we would have to do some time-consuming analysis with various spreadsheets.
We made the switch to Shopify because we liked that the back-end apps can be integrated as well as the comprehensive reporting it provided. It is also user-friendly as we can make modifications without having to hire a technical expert. As a result, we have better control of the business, like making changes in real-time.
Key strategy #4: Which channels are generating the highest sales for you now?
Product reviews and word-of-mouth are the most effective channels for generating growth. When asked what they like about WaterField, people will talk about the quality products and excellent customer service. By investing in good customer service, the company lets customers do the marketing for them. To encourage testimonials, we have people provide feedback using six words, and we feature some of the more clever ones on the website.
Key strategy #5: Any tips to new online business owners?
1. Focus on customers. By interacting with them, you’ll get ideas for your new products. By listening to them and resolving their issues, you make them ambassadors for your brand. Everyone should be responding to customer emails— Gary really enjoys doing this.
2. Develop exceptional, quality products that you can be proud of. There are so many products available today, why take the trouble to re-invent the wheel? If you can answer this, then your authenticity will show, and that’s what customers look for.
3. Look for low-cost methods to do online marketing:
- getting reviews and mentions in topic-specific publications
- optimizing your product pages, blog, home page, landing pages, for SEO
- targeting specific types of customers through email campaigns
- experimenting on social media channels. Don’t worry if you have few followers, just get out there and learn! (especially now with buy buttons from Pinterest and Twitter)
4. Do how-to videos that show your customers how the product works. WaterField gets a lot of good feedback on these videos. This will help sales conversions.
Shopify makes it easy for anyone to start their business online, from adding products to accepting orders from customers. You can make your first sale the same day you sign up! Start your free 30-day trial today!