Interview with Greg Warrington, Owner of Wigs US
How did you get started with your business?
In 2007, my wife and I began discussing what we wanted to do for our life after the Marine Corps. We came to the conclusion that we no longer wanted to work for other people. Rather, we wanted to run our own business. The question was, what business should we own? Should we start one, or should we buy an existing business? One thing we knew was that we wanted to live in San Antonio, Texas. Therefore the business had to be something we can run from San Antonio.
Because of my soon to be Veteran status, we knew there were opportunities for us to purchase franchises and we looked at a wide range of business categories. But, as we researched, we realized that single franchises aren’t typically very profitable. The profits really rise when you own and run multiple franchises. Based on everything we learned, buying an existing business would be a better approach for us.
After looking at many businesses and several offers we realized that there wasn’t a business in our local area that would be the right fit for us. Our best option would be to purchase an online business that we could run from San Antonio. And that’s when we found the original wigs-us.com website.
The previous owners had launched the website in 2002, but they were looking to sell it. Our first impression was that the site was in such bad shape and the business seemed so disorganized that we almost passed on it. Having designed a web business previously, my wife was hesitant to start all over with a website that needed so much rehab work. But we decided to take a chance anyway since the business seemed to be growing despite the poorly designed website, disorganized infrastructure and an economic downturn.
We didn’t know anything about the wig business, but we had a lot of experience in organizing and bringing efficiencies to any operation. We purchased the business in 2009 and relocated all operations to San Antonio. And right away, we began transforming Wigs-US. We re-designed the website, and added many more wigs and other beauty products to the product selection. And we brought efficiencies to our order processing, inventory management and shipping operations.
We’ve been running this business for almost 3 years now. It’s funny but we talk all the time about lucky we are with our business. We see strategic advantages everywhere. We hope to continue to grow and expand.
In addition to our Wigs-US.com website, we also have a large eBay store. We don’t list our products on the Amazon marketplace. Mainly because Amazon requires everyone to use UPC code. UPC codes are not standard in our industry so it is just not feasible at this time. However, we do use Amazon Product Ads to advertise our products.
Our website Wigs-US.com is built on Shopsite and hosted by Lexiconn.
What is your marketing secret?
We provide top-notch customer service, extremely fast shipping and great prices to get and retain our customers. We want our customers to have a great experience while shopping with us.
We dropship a small percentage of our products. Those tend to be the higher-end products that we don’t sell as often. We don’t recommend dropshipping a large percentage of your offerings because then you are at the mercy of the dropship supplier and their stock levels and their customer service. Also, the margins are just not there for most drop ship products.
What is your advice to other small business owners?
Slow and steady wins the race. There is no overnight success. Building a great business takes time and dedication. So make a plan and then take one step at a time to make it all come together.
How has Ordoro benefited you?
Ordoro has helped us become super efficient! Since the beginning we have always looked for ways to bring efficiencies to our order processing, inventory management and shipping operations so we could focus as many man-hours on growth and marketing. Ordoro has been an amazing tool for us to achieve these goals.
Because of Ordoro, we get more done before 10 am than most online sellers do all day. We keep all our inventory information in Ordoro.
One downside is that their eBay integration is not yet complete. Once that is available, eBay will become a much easier place to sell for us, and Ordoro will take 2-3 steps out of our daily process. And once we get our eBay store integrated, we will be doing the happy dance!!
We appreciate the responsiveness of their staff and the continued expansion of the capabilities of their system. We know that as our company grows, Ordoro will be right there with us helping to manage and run our business efficiently.