Web Wholesaler Magazine - The Official Publication of WholesaleCentral.com

Web Wholesaler Magazine - The Official Publication of WholesaleCentral.com

Web Wholesaler Magazine
Feature Article: May 2008 Issue

Sometimes you just know early on in a venture how things will work out. From the start, they go very much for or against you. When Summer Guerrieri started planning her online wholesale jewelry business, one of the first smart things she did was look for a URL that would be found easily by wholesale buyers searching on Google. Her associate at the time, Gerald Kent, was already running a successful offline jewelry warehouse that served local and regional retailers. Guerrieri's job was to launch the web division and find a URL that would serve the purpose. Guerrieri wanted to take the business both national and international via the Internet. She began tapping domain name services to figure out what was available out there for a reasonable price. While performing what was a thorough search, Guerrieri was not expecting to find anything available that was incredibly relevant. After all, when she was finalizing her online business plan, the calendar year was 2006, not 1996. But then, she surprisingly found CheapWholesaleJewelry.com at what she called, "A very reasonable price." Guerrieri was fairly shocked to see it available and had the street smarts to jump on the opportunity, buying the URL right away. Because of her due diligence, the wind was blowing at her back from the outset. "I looked through other domains just to see what was good for jewelry websites," Guerrieri said. "I was very, very happy to find that particular URL available. Let me tell you, the absolute first step in starting an online business is the name and URL you are going to use. If your name has nothing to do with what you are selling, your idea is probably not going to go anywhere. I mean, it might, but you have to put a lot more effort into it." As Guerrieri demonstrated, the right moniker can mean an awful lot. In the company's first two years online, its sales have grown by 20 percent month over month. Orders come into the ecommerce system and go out the warehouse door, keeping the 100,000 square foot facility buzzing with activity.