I just got back from Chicago where I attended the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition. I wasn’t quite sure what I would gain from going to it, but I knew that there had to be some knowledge to be attained by rubbing elbows and listening to some of the top retailers on the web. I had hoped that I would come back armed with all kinds of new information about doing business on the internet to justify the couple thousand dollars it cost me to be there. What I came back with, though, was a little different.
I sat through a couple of sessions where different speakers discussed their web beginnings. One guy (from babyage.com) talked about how they built their website and at one point they decided to use a third party e-commerce solution. He talked about how much of a nightmare it was. They claimed it did what he wanted, but he quickly found out it fell short. He spent around $250,000 on the software, and the whole fiasco cost him around $400,000 (time wasted, customers lost, inventory misplaced) in the end, as he had to completely scrap it.
What blew me away, though, was how many similar stories I heard. It seemed like I talked to several people who weren’t pleased with what they got when building their site. It started to make sense, though, because the more vendors I talked to, the more I found out that a lot of them were selling whole solutions. When somebody approached me about software that would help streamline our packing process after receiving orders, I wanted to hear what they had to say. It turns out, it wasn’t something I could just add to my existing platform, but a complete system they had already built. When I explained that I already had a system I was happy with and I didn’t want to start over, they didn’t really have anything left to offer.
Whenever vendors would question me about parts of the website to see if they could gain insight into something I may not be happy with, I would always end up bursting their bubble. One vendor went as far as to ask to see my site. They claimed to be able to do all of these amazing things. After two days of feeling like something must be wrong with me because I didn’t feel like anything was wrong with my site (you may have to read that twice—confusing, I know), I decided to show them. After showing them the front and back end of my site, they didn’t have any more claims, though. It was like they realized that they couldn’t really do anything for me, after all. When I explained that my site was built from scratch, and that I owned my site outright, they just didn’t seem to get it. It seemed like such a foreign concept to them to pay for a service and then be done with it—no more fees. And so about an hour before I left the conference, it all finally came to me. The reason it didn’t seem right when I would talk to vendors was because they were talking to me like something was wrong with my current site. The reason I was feeling out of place was because I wasn’t insecure about my site and most others seemed to be. Other people were looking for the fancy packaging of big “all-in-one solutions.”
I say all of this to let you guys know how much I appreciate the work you have done so far. Not that I didn’t already appreciate it, but this really drove it home. I came back even more confident in my decision to use End Point. It’s like I’ve found a secret that needs to be unleashed, and there’s all of these other people looking for the same thing, but just don’t know where to find it. My excitement has been renewed as we approach this new football season, and I look forward to more quality work from you guys.
Thanks,
Jared
P.S. As another testament to your work, I submitted tigerdistrict.com to Gomez.com at the show. They were doing a demonstration of their testing software. I was ranked among the highest when it came to home page load time. I was consistently better than many others’ sites.
Thanks for the endorsement, Jared! Again we see that there are no limits to what we can achieve together when we start with our customers’ vision for their business; select powerful, proven open source technologies; and build customized, flexible solutions on that solid foundation.
