In Pictures: Online and Open for Business

www.maplelinefarm.com/index.htm

Paul Kokoski is the current owner of Mapleline Farm in Hadley, Mass., which his great grandfather, Stanley, started in 1904. Today, the farm has more than 150 cows, a farm store across the street, and several business branches including home delivery, the bottling plant, dairy farm, and wholesale account management. Twelve employees work in the processing and bottling plant, care for and milk the cows, and drive delivery trucks.

Wholesale Roots, run by Paul Kokoski's father John, manages Mapleline’s 125 business accounts including the restaurants, stores and cafes that sell or use Mapleline’s products. Although the elder Mr. Kokoski uses the phone to manage Wholesale Roots' business, his son thinks it would be easier to switch over to Internet.

The Mapleline Farm Home Delivery Service delivers to about 700 homes per week, and is primarily run online. Mapleline Farm’s Web site has forms for submitting a new order, changing an existing order, or forms for first-time customers.

Emails contain the name, address, current status and item numbers of the customer’s order. The system is maintained through a software program Paul Kokoski uses on his computer.

“Online ordering is black and white. Seeing it right in front of you on the computer screen is much easier,” said Kokoski. He explained that orders “change five to six times during a phone conversation and at the end you aren’t exactly sure what the person ordered.” Kokoski says he receives “50-60 emails of orders a day” versus ten phone calls.

Mapleline Farm supports local businesses by posting links to their product partners’ Web sites online.

Mapleline Farm is a member of Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) and a part of CISA’s Local Hero program. Links to the farm’s Web site can be found on CISA’s site under “Dairy + Egg Farms” and “Search Local Farms.”

www.periodyssey.com/

Periodyssey is one of the few mail order companies in the country that specializes in pre-1950s American periodicals. Richard West founded the company in the pre-Internet days of 1993. West, Kayt Thompson and Monica Leslie are the backbone of Periodyssey, which is located in Easthampton, Mass.

Periodyssey maintains a “Web presence” through E-Bay auctions, and links on several book Web sites. “If people like what they see on a Web site where our products are linked, they visit our site to find out what else we have,” says Thompson.

In the pre-Internet days, the majority of West’s business was putting out quarterly catalogues through the mail. “Now I put out monthly catalogues online, but they only account for about 20 percent of my business.”

West says he had an email address in 1995 but “was not yet actively exploiting the Web.” For Periodyssey to make the transition to the Web, it required Kayt Thompson’s “familiarity with this new technology to put all of the pieces together.” She was hired in 1998 and “everything changed after that.”

“I can’t imagine my business working today without the World Wide Web. Virtually no business we do now, we could have done 15 years ago,” says West. Thompson, the office manager for Periodyssey, estimates that they do about “90-95 percent” of their business online.

Periodyssey is one of the first hits that come up on a Google search for old American periodicals. Thompson says, “We don’t seek out customers. People come to us.”

www.amhersttoybox.com/

Liz Rosenberg opened The Toy Box in downtown Amherst, Mass. in November 2003. The space was an existing toy store. She had been the manager for the previous owners, and when they decided to sell the business, she bought it from them.

There are approximately four to five employees working at The Toy Box at a time. During the holidays, the store is very busy.

“The Web site is used to announce sales, new toys, and events. It’s purely informational,” Rosenberg says. January was advertised as Puzzle Month on the Web site, and all jigsaw puzzles were discounted 20 percent. The Toy Box Web site, “shows the flavor and character” of her business.

Rosenberg uses the Internet to browse other toy store Web sites in order to get new ideas for her own store. She also goes onto the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association (ASTRA) Web site to see what is “hot” in the specialty toy world.

Rosenberg does most of her ordering through sales reps and at specialty toy conventions. However, Nakajima, the online supplier she ordered from on her home desktop PC, became inconvenient when she found the site would not support her Mac laptop.

Because Rosenberg is an ASTRA member, The Toy Box can be found on ASTRA’s “Find a Toy Store” online locator, where potential customers can search for toy stores by state, town, and surrounding mile radius.

www.suttersjewelry.com/

James Sutter opened his store, Sutter’s Jewelry, in Holyoke, Mass. in spring 2004, although the business dates back to 1968 when his father opened Sutter’s Mill on Main Street in downtown Northampton. James started making jewelry at the age of seven, learning from his father throughout the years. He now creates his own custom pieces and has started his own jewelry line as well as continuing his father’s.

The first piece of jewelry Sutter made at age seven—there is a picture of it on his Web site—was intended to be a dragon, “although it looks like an alligator with two legs,” Sutter says. “People use my Web site to find out more about me. They will usually have gone on my Web site, after seeing an advertisement, before they walk into my store.”

Sutter says, “I don’t get a lot of business from the Internet, but I use the Internet a lot for my business.” Sutter uses the Internet to shop online and search inventory.

“I will have two dozen emails going back and forth with a customer, going over designs, comparing stone prices, and making adjustments,” Sutter says. The Internet allows Sutter to have more flexibility with his schedule, “I can do work at any hour of the day.”

Email facilitates the design process by allowing Sutter and his customers to instantly exchange ideas and images of the piece of jewelry. “That way a customer doesn’t have to come in and sit down for half an hour each time I make an adjustment.”

Sutter is proud of his family’s tradition of constantly improving the quality of their products and efficiency of their business. “The Internet is another evolution of the process,” he says.

opticalexpressionsmass.com/

Shelia Gibbs, a licensed optician for the last 13 years, first thought of starting her own business eight years ago. Interviewed on the first anniversary of Optical Expressions, Shelia—who co-owns the eyeglasses store with her husband Derryl—has turned her dream of running a business into a reality.

Because they are a small family owned business, “customers get the one-on-one attention that is not going to be the same as going to a chain store," says Gibbs. "We e-mail a lot with customers.”

Optical Expressions advertises events for specials and sales through Facebook. “We just did Winter Wonderland and now Valentine’s Day is coming up so we’re going to do an event for that. Each event draws different types of people into the store,” says Gibbs

Gibbs says Optical Expressions does not sell glasses through its Web site because they want people to come in and “touch and feel” the glasses and “to hold them in their hands.”

The Web site is informational. “It’s to get them in the door, to show what brands we carry, what styles of frames we have.”

As a member of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce and the New England Black Chamber of Commerce, Optical Expressions has a link on both of these organizations’ Web sites. In addition, Gibbs advertises online.

www.nfgcycles.com/NFG_Cycles/Welcome.html

Niall Gengler, founder of NFG Cycles, began building bicycles six years ago at Hampshire College. After graduating, Hampshire allowed him to stay and use their machine shop until he got his business off the ground. He moved into his own workspace in Easthampton, Mass. six months ago. He designs and builds race team bicycles, commuter bicycles, and special order bicycles, tailored to fit the individual rider.

Because NFG Cycles is still very much a start-up business, Gengler says, “I often work 60-80 hour weeks.”

Gengler built his own Web site, “despite not being very computer savvy,” with iWeb—a Mac program.

Gengler says people often find him using frame-building forums. “It is very much online word-of-mouth.”

“The Internet is so useful because if I have a question concerning anything about bicycles or my business, I can look it up in a few seconds. I have that information readily available.”

“I am constantly using Web sites like craigslist.com to search online for bicycle building parts and machines.”

“This past week I received calls from Michigan and Arizona, all because of my Web site.”

www.shangshung.org/store/

The international Shang Shung Institute strives to preserve Tibetan cultural traditions. The institute’s U.S. bookstore, based in Conway, Mass., is now 12 years old. Manager Ruben Eduardo runs the store with office assistant, Marina DePaula, although DePaula is currently transitioning to take over as manager.

Day-to-day online activity consists mostly of orders and purchases on the Web site, from people throughout the world. Customers pay online through PayPal.

The Web site features sale items and new items, and shows which items are out of stock. It also provides pictures of the inventory.

“Older, less technologically savvy people tend to prefer to order through the phone or by email,” DePaula said. “They get confused by how the Web site works.”

Some books are produced by Snow Lion, a publishing house, in addition to being published by Shang Shung Institute. “We e-mail the publishing company if we need more copies of a certain book,” DePaula said.

The Shang Shung Institute also sells its books through Amazon. The Institute receives email orders from Amazon and sends them out immediately to Amazon for distribution.

Because it is a nonprofit organization, only members can order from the Web site. A database of members is maintained on the computer to cross-reference with people placing orders. “We are working on creating a world-wide database for all of the different locations around the world,” says DePaula.

www.thayerstreetassociates.com/index.html

Vern Harrington started Thayer Street Associates—a full-service firm providing general contracting, construction, architectural design and custom cabinetry and casework design and fabrication—out of his home on Thayer Street in South Deerfield, Mass. in the pre-Internet days of 1988. Eight years ago, the firm moved into their new space in downtown South Deerfield.

Thayer Street Associates has 16 employees across the firm’s three branches: administrative, cabinet shop (building furniture), and construction (in the field.)

They are “e-mailing all the time” with professional and commercial clients and suppliers, ordering and purchasing products. “Manufacturers send us links for the specifications of products, and we send those links to architects and engineers. We are literally a copy center,” says Harrington.

Harrington says the paper end of things is “gratefully falling off…We can send drawings without having to leave the office. It saves a huge amount of paper and time, but mostly paper.”

Before the Internet, Thayer Street had to call manufacturers and suppliers to inquire about product dimensions. “Now we just download product info—height, weight, etc.”

Now, in the age of the Internet, “It all happens online.”

Harrington says, “In the past year or two we’ve been able to get full sets of drawings digitally,” which has been a huge change.