Staying One Step Ahead

Toughest challenges in the beginning: growing a business while being self-funded. “We were sometimes forced into going on back-order almost immediately, while still trying to maintain a decent level of service to our customers,” she recounts. “With 20 inventory turns a year, it was really tough.”

Hardest challenge today: finding new sources of growth in conventional catalog marketing. “It’s becoming more difficult to come up with new sources of names,” she says. “We’re looking at new distribution channels as a way to grow. But I don’t see the catalog as ever going away. Most of our Internet volume is driven by our catalog drops.”