Name of your website?Clark Street Home
Your name?
Angie Trammel
Your Location (city, etc)
St. Louis
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Clark Street Home is a home furnishings and decor store. We want to offer the best quality & newest trends at affordable prices that people can afford. We currently carry 2,000 furniture and home decor products. This fall we will launch our bedding and electronics categories & hope to double our offerings.
What experience do you have?
Clark Street is a new company with a lot of experience. Our partners bring a vast knowledge of merchandising, buying, and website maintenance, database management and web design for large catalog companies such as Montgomery Wards, Victoria’s Secret, La-Z-Boy, Home Visions, Sears Home Center, Sears Showplace, Sears Room for Kids, Your Kids Direct, Charles Keath, & Caterpillar.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
We used to manage DMSI's (Direct Marketing Services, Inc.) online stores. When they went out of business, I said let's open our own store. Why not? We enjoy working on websites & enjoy the furniture industry. It was just a natural progression.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It took a lot longer than I expected to go live. We started planning about a year ago & finally launched this Summer. Also, in this economy we're trying to keep our start up costs as low as possible. Which means that we have to do everything we can ourselves. It's one thing to write all about SEO, advertising, and directory listings in a marketing plan but to have to execute it is another. Everyday I learn something new and realize how much I don't know.
What makes your business different?
We've been behind the scenes before so we know that our vendors are our best asset. Good vendor relationships will grow both of our companies in these trying times. Without new and exciting products to showcase we have nothing. We value our vendor relationships & hope to grow both our company and our vendors.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
100,000 products. 100 vendors. 1 million in sales.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
The time has been unbelievable. Nights and weekends for a year. Money has also been tight. Success just around the corner.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We have the plans together, just have to wait for the money to invest in custom development. It hasn't been the right economy to start a company with a large debt.
What is your website address?
Clark Street Home
