| Two
Maryland online retailers — Z&M of Columbia and
frednecks.com of Frederick — are far from being in
same league as Amazon.com, but they have fashioned a
growing business model built on doing most of their own
online marketing.
Z&M has grown from a part-time endeavor
specializing in selling razors that grossed ‘‘in the
thousands” almost six years ago for partners Zack Mond
and Mitchell Hyatt to a full-time corporation with 10
employees annually grossing in the millions and selling
a full range of consumer goods, Mond said.
Z&M does not
maintain links with any of Maryland’s online ‘‘malls,”
Mond said. He did say the company has a link at
catalogcity.com, a national online mall, because Z&M
targets the national market.
In the last year ‘‘growth
has been around 50 percent,” said Mond, declining to
give specific figures.
On a smaller scale is
frednecks.com, which features Frederick-related
T-shirts, bumper stickers, baseball caps and the like.
The business is a part-time endeavor, with ‘‘revenues
... enough to cover costs and a small profit,” said
founder and operator Michael Cross.
‘‘The amount of traffic
to the site has experienced tremendous growth over the last
few months, thanks to advertising and more public presence,”
he said. ‘‘The site gets an average of 10,000 hits per
month, which is great for a small, local site.”
‘‘The amount of traffic
to the site has experienced tremendous growth over the last
few months, thanks to advertising and more public presence,”
he said. ‘‘The site gets an average of 10,000 hits per
month, which is great for a small, local site.”
To save time and money, Cross
uses CafePress.com, which allows a user to upload personally
produced designs, slogans and other artwork to produce a
variety of products at no cost to the user. CafePress.com gets
money only when the product sells and cuts a royalty check to
the user.
‘‘The great thing is that
the Web store is run 100 percent by a third party,” Cross
said. ‘‘We simply submit designs, create the Web shop
design, and they do everything else ... production, shipping,
returns, credit card transactions, etc.
‘‘Although this means
smaller profit margins for us, there is absolutely no overhead
to sell our products on the Internet. It is a very
cost-effective way to become involved in e-commerce.
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