Q&A: eBags’ Peter Cobb Explains Secrets to His Company's Record-Breaking Success

One by one, the brands said, "I'm with you. It's been a challenging year, let's go for it." So they moved their sales up for us. That allowed us to go on sale with a lot of products starting Thanksgiving, which typically wouldn't be on sale until Dec. 26. That's a huge offering.

ROI: What recent campaigns contributed to eBags record sales, and why?
PC: The nicest thing about our five-day, 63 percent average increase stemmed from the two fastest growing marketing channels — SEO and email— and they're both free. The fastest growing marketing channels being the ones that have no cost is what you want to see. We didn't have to do TV ads or expensive marketing campaigns to drive our sales growth. It came organically.