How To Create An e-Commerce Business - Juliann Crafton

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk JuliAnn welcome to the show.

Sebastian Rusk

Thank you. Nice to be on here. And you're in the sunny, warm Miami, and I'm in cold winter Michigan.

JuliAnn Crafton

I would like to be freezing right now.

Sebastian Rusk

Would you?

JuliAnn Crafton

I mean, for like the weekend.

Sebastian Rusk

Right. And then go away. Yes. Yes.

I like it in little spurts. I lived in Chicago for about a year and I'm like, that'll be a wrap.

Yes. A little different.

That wind is no joke coming off that Lake. I got warned about it and I'm like, nah, it like, it's almost the cold. It's just, it just puts you in a bad mood. It's almost like here when it's too hot.

Well, when you round the corner in the blocks in Chicago, that wind creates a tunnel because of all the buildings. So it definitely is chilly.

Wakes you up real quick.

Yeah.

So it's great to connect with you. I'm glad you took some time out of your day to hang out with me for a few minutes on the show. I love to tell people's story, um, on this show and we, for some context for our listeners, I always like to back up to the beginning of the story. Now that's different for everyone. So you can define the beginning, but bring us back a little bit to the beginning of the story. What really brought you to present day with what you're working on and in the business that you guys have created and built.

So I was born with a mother and father who are both entrepreneurs. My father was a risk taker by nature, right? So he was a big game hunter, but he started off building and do building houses. And when the real estate market kind of took a dive in the 80s, they bought a restaurant because, you know, that just seems to just follow up with building. And they both like to cook. And so I have two older brothers and two older sisters, and the brothers kind of took over the building end of things. And then he wanted something for my sister and I to do. And so he thought, oh, we'll just get this cute, quaint little restaurant. And they quadrupled the size in the first four years and just did really well with it, but they worked really hard. And I love the restaurant industry. I was born and raised, didn't have a lot of nepotism, had to start at the bottom, you know, bussing tables, doing dishes. But you really learn the value of customer service. And I think that's huge. And went through college and did all the normal stuff, got my career. And I started working for an entrepreneur in e-commerce space in 2008. And I was doing his purchasing. I was the sixth employee. And I'd never done e-commerce before, but purchasing was like second nature, you know, when you're ordering for restaurants and bars and different things, which I had ran most of my life growing up. There was no difference, right? I didn't care what he was selling. And this was particularly in the aftermarket machine parts business, right, for agricultural and construction. And I knew enough about construction just growing up with my father and he actually had went back to building in the 90s because he kind of got bored after he kind of solved every problem the restaurant would have. And so my mom continued running that and he went back to building. But I really found my love. I mean, I love to buy things and get a good deal. And so in e-commerce was an awesome outlet that I was not familiar with. And in 2008, Amazon wasn't really what Amazon was today, right? So it was just eBay. Within two years, I ended up running his company. I was promoted and he was doing about $250,000 a year at the time when I first started. And I grew it to 40 million, a little over 40 million in eight years.

Wow.

We had 100 employees. We had three warehouses. We had Gosh, we were running a couple hundred million dollars of inventory, you know, a year, and we stocked a lot of things. And then, you know, inventory turns is a big thing. I learned how to import and export through that, all your harmonized tariff codes and so forth. But in 2019, my husband and I, who's the, he's the opposite of I am. So he's super analytical, loves data, and loves all of the, you know, technology and automations and processes and things like that, where I'm the bigger picture person. So we complement each other really well, both professionally and personally, which is nice.

Always helpful in marriage, right?

Right, yes. In business. That is true. A lot of people can't do business and personal, you know, and the same thing. And we say, you know, he has his realm and I respect that decision when he has things and I have mine. And, you know, we work really well together. So yeah, definitely thankful for that. And 2019, we decided to go out on our own. I had kind of reached the top. I mean, the company I was running was getting some private equity offers and I didn't want to start all over again for someone else. And so we just decided to start all over for ourselves. And that's when JJC Unlimited was born. And we got our first clients. I mean, the framework was there, same architecture as I was doing in working for someone else is we had multiple stores underneath an umbrella. And that's exactly how we design JJC to function and work. This case, we have clients instead of our own companies, right? So we bring on clients, but we boost it in a co-op situation or similar to it by leveraging everybody's spend together, right? So it gets you better deals because it's all about cost of goods. and then leveraging his technology and massive amounts of data. I have manufacturers that I have connections with for 20 years all around the world, which adds to it, right? So I can get a lot of products made, developed, plus buy here domestically in the United States and sell products. So you're just gonna buy at the best deal and sell at the highest margin you can. That's the way e-commerce works, but growing it across all the marketplaces, learning the marketplace cadences and rules and regulations because you're playing in somebody else's sandbox, right? And it's kind of a rinse and repeat, right? There's no two stores alike, but there's definitely steps and stages and best practices that we have developed and refined. because they're constantly changing. E-commerce does evolve. Amazon still has the biggest market share, but Walmart and eBay, I mean, who's gonna say no to an extra 10, 15, 20,000 a month if you can add on additional marketplaces and sell the same products you're selling on your main store? So. Yeah.

I saw Home Depot's doing that. We're starting to get into that a lot more now too. Delivery. Yeah. Get a two by four delivered to your door.

Well, you can always have delivery, but usually there was a bigger threshold. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty soon you'll see the, um, bots floating around, flying around and delivering your, uh, your two by fours and trusses.

And that's terrifying.

It's no, no worse than Walmart doing all the, their deliveries.

So there's like, I've seen the closest I've seen is I haven't seen any drones, but I've seen, uh, downtown, um, what looks like a cooler on wheels. And it's just, uh, yeah, it's just, it's delivering ice cream or something. I don't know what's in the cooler, but, uh, it's got a low antenna and it's on wheels and there's no human inside. Maybe there is. We just can't, we can't see them anywhere on here, but, uh, yeah, technology is evolving, uh, whether we like it or not in that or at a rapid, rapid pace. So you guys are going into year six now. of doing your own thing and JJC Unlimited being a reality, what's been the biggest lesson that you've learned over the past five years?

I would say the biggest lesson is, you know, because we play in somebody else's marketplace, we always try to mitigate as much risk as possible, right? Every business, every industry has a risk involved, but working hard and striving to eliminate as much or mitigate as much risk for us and for our clients, has always been our number one priority while meeting their goals and hopefully exceeding their goals as they grow. So we've been really blessed to have a great bunch of clients and we do onboard new clients, but it's just a rinse and repeat. Biggest lesson we've learned I would say scaling, when you're scaling your business, you have to be very careful because you need to make sure that foundation doesn't have any chinks and holes in it. We had a couple of issues at different times with our softwares and integrating. So when you're cutting over to a new software, there's a process and I'm always push, push, push, go, go, go. And Jeremiah is like, we need to like, let's set a date and let's set a time and let's do this. And so there's always that yin and yang, that's good. But I would say when you're implementing the new software for marketplaces and things like that, it's just, we always try to beta test and we didn't do that one time before we introduced a client to it. And It was potentially a big problem, but we were thankfully able to solve it, but it just causes a lot of stress, a lot of heartache and sleepless nights. And that's no fun. That's no fun. And then you just smile in front of the client and say, well, it's all solved now. Have a good day. You know, I don't need those sleepless nights.

It's like, it's like, it's like a duck, right? You're just swimming along smoothly on the surface, but just paddling away below, below the surface. Right.

Yes. Yeah. I get ahead of it. So, but no, it's, it was, it was a good learning lesson that, you know, you don't always have to push so hard and try to be the fastest at everything. You, you really need to, uh, to really pay attention and do it. So, yeah.

And what's been the most exciting part?

For us, it's seeing the clients reach their goals. I mean, every client is different. I like to get to know them. I need to know what their goals are, their why's, and what they're doing, because I can better serve them if I know why they're doing it. And then sharing that with our team. We have 15 employees. It doesn't seem like a lot, but there's a lot that happens with software and automation that we put together. And when you're buying products and selling products, I mean, there's moving pieces. We do ship some of our client stuff out of our warehouse, but overall, it's big shipments, right? So I think it's just, it's my form of gambling. And I share that with a client so that they, you know, they get the notifications on their phones when sales are happening and different things. And it's, it is, it's like a child when they're opening up their first bag of candy and they get to see like, wow, you know, look at all this and, you know, ding, ding, ding. And I'm like, okay, you need to shut the notifications off at some point, but good. I'm glad you're enjoying it. That's fun. It's fun for me to see that and to be able to have people reach their goals, which with, you know, they don't need to necessarily know, but that helps us reach ours too. And so creating those win-win situations, I think is the most exciting thing. When they get to be the top rated sellers and they have all their little badges across the marketplaces and are doing well, that's fun. It's relaxing. So when you think about exciting, that's what makes me happy to be able to deliver those and still deliver the good news to clients because I face majority of them. I don't hand them off to a virtual assistant somewhere. We handle our own clients. And I think it's important. It goes back to customer service. And I think that's why they stay with us. I have met 99% of them in person. I think there's two that I haven't met, but they're fairly new yet. So I think it's important to do that.

Yeah, it is. Very much so. Hey, listen, the old adage, if you don't take care of your customer, somebody else will.

That is true. That is very true. And there's, you know, we didn't reinvent the wheel. Um, I feel we do a good job and we work hard at it and stay in communication with our clients. And so, you know, there's, there's a lot of moving parts when it comes to e-commerce. Um, everybody's sometimes overwhelmed in the beginning. And, you know, if I try to explain the process in totality, they, they look at me with that, you know, the, the deer in the headlights days look. Um, but then when they start going through it, they're like, oh, okay, this is what you were talking about. And I'm like, yep. It sure was. It's, this is how it works. There's a process to it. So sure.

Yeah. You got to speak their language in your language is as, as, as, uh, you know, crazy loaded as that sounds on there just to be able to help them better understand. So when, what's your, what's your main process for, for acquiring new clients?

So we don't do a ton of advertising. Clients do refer us to people that they know and things of that nature, which is great and super flattering. That's the best form of flattery that I can think of, that we've done a good enough job for them to be able to talk to other people about it. Gaining new clients, it's really looking at helping people. There's a lot of people that reach out to us. We just are launching our first school community to offer a lower cost, I guess, to get into this game, as long as they can do it themselves, right? But we can help them alleviate and circumvent a lot of the potholes and different things that people get into because they didn't know how or what they were doing always. and try to even out that road so it's not so much of an uphill, it gives them a definite advantage. Because the done for you, where we literally are their store's managers, we take care of all things, whether it's customer service, shipping, reordering quantities, questions, all of the above, where they are literally just the business owner. Um, and so this offers a much lower ticket, much more manageable situation, but still trying to keep up on all the content because marketplaces change all the time. I mean, COVID caused the biggest changes I'd seen in the 15 years prior. And, um, a lot of it just because the marketplace flooded and had such a big boom. I mean, we're growing 20% year over year, just on e-commerce alone. It's a trillion dollar market. Like it's trillion dollars.

Yeah. Well, that also offering that, that, um, school resource where people for do-it-yourselfers can often turn into done for you clients as well. So that's, that's how you were able to get kind of the best of both worlds because you can cater to the do-it-yourselfers, but also sometimes people get in there and think they can do it themselves and realize, well, there's a little bit too much work than I had bargained for. I may need someone to step in and take care of it for me.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's just a lot of nuances with every marketplace is different. Very little crossover from a customer base. I mean, we've done a ton of demographics on it. If you're a Walmart customer, you stay a Walmart customer. You may have Amazon Prime, but you don't generally shop on Amazon or eBay. And they all are very, very different and diverse. because there's millions of people in this world. And once you conquer the US market, then you go abroad, you go to Canada, you go to Mexico, you go to Europe, you go to the Middle East and sell in Australia. We have clients that sell in all the marketplaces, just about. Egypt is the one I don't have anybody selling yet, but.

Yet, keywords.

There's time, there's time. 2025 is the year to thrive, right?

Absolutely. Well, that leads me to my last question, which is, you know, at the time of us recording this episode, it's literally the second day of 2025. So what are you the most excited about for this brand new year?

We've been beta testing TikTok for a while. And so that's an exciting piece of potential growth for current clients and new clients to be able to grow into. And obviously there's a ton of controversy over TikTok, but commerce always manages to happen, whether it's war, peace, stale economy, great economy, commerce still happens. It does around the world. It's not just in the US. And so, If TikTok can gain and some of the, I mean, they're growing fast enough to catch Amazon's market share. That's the insane part. I am not a TikToker. I don't sit on there and dance and sing and do all that, but I'll sell on it all day long. Like, you know, if somebody wants to buy products.

Live social selling is a thing. It's been around for a while. I don't think people recognized it as that. I really first discovered it the most on TikTok because of the TikTok shops and they're making it really obvious it's on there. The first thing I thought of was, wow, how long is it gonna take for this to be saturated? Because it seems to be everybody's selling the same products. That's what it seems to be.

So I'm excited because our product, I mean, we don't necessarily have one niche. We really have, I mean, completely diverse product offerings. And so it's fun to be able to go on there and push, because I think what we do isn't sexy. I'm not selling perfume. I'm not selling clothes or jewelry or, you know, a lot of your beauty products. I would love to, but there's just, those are very saturated markets. And so I deal in the stuff that makes money and it's not necessarily the sexiest thing in the world. So, but it sells and it's profitable. So we, we, we love those. So I'm, I'm hoping to offer it, but to your point, TikTok has a ton of impulse buyers, right? Cause you, you kind of have to be, it's, it's right in front of your face and you're constantly, you know. Well, they're demoing it too.

I mean, for most of the time they are. And it's very also I've I've been I've I've I've fallen victim to like, is this a TikTok video or are they trying to sell me something type type scenario on here, which is the way that it should be anyway. It should be very organic on there. But what I've often done, I think I bought a couple of things and neck massager or sometimes a couple of things I bought there. But I often go to Amazon right away and see if the product's there. Because I want it tomorrow. Because you ain't getting it tomorrow on TikTok. That's my big hang up. And we won everything yesterday.

Oh, Amazon has spent billions of dollars teaching us that we won it yesterday. And so they've done a phenomenal job with it. And it is difficult. That's why Walmart and eBay are not as big. Well, a couple of things. One, their technology. Two, their reporting. but three is because they cannot get to that. I mean, you can buy something with next day air, but that's costly, that's expensive. You want free shipping, but you want it to your point yesterday. TikTok fees from a seller perspective are the lowest by far. I mean, there's no monthly store fee, which is phenomenal, right? They do meter you until they get to know you as a good seller, because you start off with a hundred listings a day, but that's still a really big advantage. And then the first 90 days, it's like 1.9% of the, the sale fee. And then after that it's a flat five, which is far below any of the other market places. So it's amazing.

I keep getting offers to open a Tik Tok shop. Maybe I need to open a Tik Tok shop and sell podcast mics.

I can help you up. I can, I will get you some swag. We will hook you up and we'll get this done.

Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm going to take you up on that. I was like, this is, this seems too easy. I see some people selling stuff. I'm like, they're killing it. And I could, they can't hold my lunchbox. You know, I can.

It'll be interesting how their catalog starts evolving. Like Amazon, you have multiple sellers on one product. eBay, it's one seller, one product. Walmart, you still have some multiple sellers, but then you can still upload your own products. So there's a variation of it. So it'll be interesting to see what TikTok evolves with their catalog and how they're going to manage that. Because it can get very, very overloaded too.

Oh, I bet. We ruin everything.

I know. It's one of those things. But I love to sell products. Like, come on.

Yes. Yeah, I bet. Well, you guys are good at it. So, hey, stay in the lane that you're good at to stay focused and excited about what you're doing, I've learned. Well, Julian, it's been so great to get to know a little bit more about you and your business. I love what you guys are doing. I think everyone has, when we think e-commerce, we think making money while you sleep. I think that's always what we, and I think that's always in the back of someone's mind too, is how do we, you know, I would love to do that on there. So I'm wishing you guys a very prosperous 2025 and ongoing success. You guys have clearly created something that you're excited about, that you're deeply passionate about that works and it's profitable. So keep up the great work. Any final thoughts for our listeners?

I think as an individual, as a person, I always wanted my brick-and-mortar stores, right? I still love brick-and-mortar stores and it makes me sad that they're not going to be around in the next 10 years, I don't think, right? Just because limited choices. So if you're thinking about getting into e-commerce, think about your overhead costs, which is the biggest cost of any brick-and-mortar store. I don't care what industry, if it's a restaurant, if it's a shop down the street, you have to rely on foot traffic. Ecommerce is not relying on foot traffic. Our clients do not spend a stupid amount of money on advertising. It's little to none, especially in the beginning. It's only until they get to be very big that they spend money on advertising. Now, unless you're selling your own products, so private label is a little bit different, right? But we do a really good job of getting every keyword in there and making sure the algorithms and the buy boxes are rotating. so that you get your sales. And so if this is an investment, but it's a realist, it's a digital piece of real estate that you put on your asset balance sheet, right? That is a cash flowing and profitable entity that will give you the legacy. I mean, there's no end. You can create your own end if you want. But the overhead, which is the beginning, is such a lower barrier than what it used to be. I mean, if you tried to buy a building or even lease a building, it's thousands and thousands of dollars, right? So think about what that looks like. And then come see me because everybody should have a make money while you sleep situation revenue stream coming into their pocketbooks.

For sure, for sure. Well, thanks again for your time, Juliana. I really appreciate it and happy 2025 to you guys.

Same to you. Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.