Chilton Richard
Fort Lauderdale, FL (USA)
Role(s):
Founder/Owner/Principal
Islandbargains.com
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Startup
Location:
Fort Lauderdale
Industry:
Internet
Year Founded:
2009
Number Employees:
1-10 people
Business Stage:
Growth (profitable)
Entity Type:
Limited Liability Company
Description:
Internet shopping and shipping service throughout the Carribbean.
We sell over 3000 items, mostly consumables such as groceries and household goods. We sell both to residents and commercial clients.
Our repeat customer base is an outstanding 70%. Once we have a customer, they tend to buy from us regularly.
Our commercial clients include the Morton Salt boat, Necker Island (Sir Richard Branson's Island), The Anguilla Post Office, as well as hundreds of small mom and pop shops, and thousands of households.
Three full years in business. Invested $85,000 mainly in website design, initial marketing, and development. We carry little, to no debt. A few thousand here or there to maintain growth spurts, i.e., equipment, technology upgrades, etc....
2010 = $211,000 ($17,000 in marketing expenses)
2011 = $440,000 ($14,000 in marketing expenses)
2012 = $800,000 + (less than $12,000)
We are growing at a rapid pace, with little to no marketing.
A second sector to our business has also starting to blow up. We call it the "Retail" or "Shop with other Stores". We not only ship our grocery orders to EVERY ISLAND, EVERY WEEK, but we also allow customers to shop with Amazon, Ebay, WalMart, etc..., and we ship those packages weekly.
We are now receiving 300 plus packages a day from online merchants, for shipping.
The key to our growth has been implementing an exclusive agent on each island. We now have agents in most islands that assist with clearing, offer home delivery services and accept cash payments for us. In these islands we have seen incredible growth.
It is now time for us to roll out our marketing plan and grab the market share. Online shopping has and is exploding in the U.S., and the Caribbean shoppers are a big part of that, however they often experience costly and time consuming shipping hassles.
More information is available upon requests, and we would love to share more inside trade information with the right person. We are actually slightly ahead of the curve on this, and hope to gain the majority of the market share before others see the opportunity.
Thanks,