Virginia eCommerce Firm Takes T-Shirts to the Bank
It’s not the Web-based aspect of his business that gives people pause about the career choice of Marc Katz, President and CEO of Customink – it’s the T-shirts. Even after more than three years of constant profitability, Katz still hears the questions: “Your parents put you through college to do this?" “You mean you do that full-time?" With 2005 revenues of $23 million, the answers to those questions are “yes" and “yes".
“We have been a Web-based company right from the beginning," says Katz. ”When we first started it was a bit difficult because the Internet bubble hadn’t yet burst and it was hard to be a bootstrap [company] in that climate. We were really roughing it then; it was hard to be heard above the clangor of the marketplace."
One of the early decisions affected by the high-flying Internet climate was to locate in McLean, Virginia rather than New York City.
“New York was just too expensive," said Katz, who was living in New York at the time. “One of my partners was working at NIH [in the DC area] so we knew things were less expensive there. We started with a 2-room sublet in the same building in McLean where we now have 20,000 square feet on a full floor." After the Internet bubble burst, Katz says that "things eased up; the noise was reduced."
“It really made things easier operationally because it reduced the unreasonable expectations about the costs of office space, advertising, staff hires, and professional services. However, when the Internet boom was over, it was harder to raise more money."
After raising around $600k from friends and family and acquiring space, the next challenge was dealing with the new ecommerce process.
