Name of your website?
aj MOSS Bedding
Your name?
David Maple
Your Location (city, etc)
North Conway
Please give us a short summary of your website?
aj MOSS has a huge selection of bedding by some top brands like Thomasville, Croscill, and Waverly. We also recently added Broyhill furniture, primarily to offer full bedroom packages that coordinate with our bedding ensembles.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
I owned a web design/development business for 5 years. I took on ajmoss.com as one of my clients. Within a year the site was really picking up a large number of visitors. The owners saw a synergistic opportunity and offered me a partnership. I took a chance and soon we had 15 full-time employees working in the USA and overseas. The rest is history.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
My first website was launched while I was in school in 1999. It was a research project on realvnc, which at the time was a free research project by Bell Labs. I was a real Linux geek and fascinated with network applications.
Of course the site I built was quite pathetic as I had no design sense and only wanted to show off every html trick available back in the dark ages.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
"aj MOSS" was chosen by my business partners, Patrick and Amy Armstrong. It does have special significance for them, but I would rather leave that story for Patrick to tell.
There are several rumors that the employees have started (all untrue). One is that it's based on a fashion industry book written by an author, A.J. Moss. Another is that it is the great, great grandfather on Patrick's side of the family.
In any event, the name has a nice professional ring to it, and we lovingly refer to our employees as "Mossters".
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
Everything. We are not a giant corporate entity. If you pick up the phone you can talk to a real woman who knows how to decorate, someone who can actually give you information and help you make an informed purchase. Try to get that kind of help at a chain store.
We respect the value of customers and try to make people happy. We have no return fee for most products. If you're unhappy with it, you just send it back. We offer Free Shipping on most purchases too. We don't make a huge amount of money. We pass along the savings and try to offer great deals to our customers. We firmly believe in small business in America, and the free market economy.
While we are a small company with real people, we sell a huge amount of bedding online. Our site is by far the easiest to use in our industry. We spend hundreds of hours on usability testing and try to make the same kind of site that we would want to shop on.
I could keep going on and on but I think it's really best illustrated by taking a look at the website. Read our "About Us" page and you'll see who we are and what we're all about.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
My wife and I have a young daughter. Patrick and Amy are having a little boy next month. For now the goal is to feed the kids and build up the business. After that I'm not really sure . . .
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Not Well! We're all workaholics and we spend far too much time in the trenches for the money that we make, but we believe in the investment that we're building in repeat customers and getting our name out there. That's what small business is all about.
It's tough to battle the corporate giants that have a choke-hold on our nation, but with hard work it can be done.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would build more features that let you custom design your own products. I see a real niche that will develop in the home fashion industry online where customers can upload their own artwork for custom printed fabric runs. As high speed becomes the new connection standard these types of applications will be viable.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Sure. I have tons of friends at MIT and other IT Universities. They'd love to come on board (if I could afford them in New Hampshire). Our site already fields millions of visitors a year and it's very, very scalable architecture.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Let's see, there are so many unexpected costs: Credit cards fees, the cost of returns, cancellations, workers compensation, increases in shipping to New Hampshire, new computers, network upgrades, new servers, New Hampshire small business tax. There are so many more.
Headaches include fighting against manufacturers who give special deals to corporate chains, blatantly abusing anti-trust laws, but doing so in sneaky ways that are hard to expose. That is an ongoing battle in every retail industry I've worked in.
What has been your biggest challenge?
My biggest challenge has been balancing my time between the huge IT needs our business has, and the time I have to allocate to seeing the big picture and making the right choices for the corporation.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Building a great website has been the best promotional investment. A lot of sites link to us because they like our tools and our interface. This helps us rank organically for lots of keywords that we otherwise would be invisible for.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Not so much really. I've run hundreds of e-commerce stores before this one so I knew what I was getting into (as far as the website is concerned).
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
I've run the site since 2002. I'll keep it going until death I suspect!
What is your website address?
aj MOSS Bedding
