A Chat With May’s Profile, Suzanne Vlietstra, president of Hobby Horse Clothing Co.

CS: Besides your catalog, what other channels are your products available in?
SV: We’ve actually had a Web site, believe it or not, since 1994. I believe we were the very first in what we call the “tack ‘n togs” industry, the “horsey” stuff. We have an annual directory for the industry and the very first year, 1994, I put my Web address in my advertisement. An editor or proofer called and said, “You have a big typo in your ad.” I said, “Oh, what’s that?” He replied, “You have this gobbly-goop that says www.” I said, “That’s a Web address.” They had never seen one before.
We didn’t have a great one, and it still is far from perfect. But it’s been very, very important to us. And because we had it so early, at this point we haven’t bought keywords or anything and we tend to come up real high on the searching. We’ve done a lot of consumer advertising over the years. So we kind of got in a little early on that. That’s been helpful for us. Another happy accident.