Ali Asaria gave up a lucrative job as a software engineer at Research In Motion Inc. to start his own online health and beauty store, Well.ca, in 2008.
The 28-year-old entrepreneur gave up his car and his Toronto home and moved in with his father to keep expenses low. Consulting for other companies, he put together some $10,000 in capital and spent his spare time building his website.
Today, the Guelph, Ont., company is doubling sales revenues every four months and has swelled to 17 employees from two. Based on "click-throughs" tracked by third-party companies, Well.ca is the Canadian online leader in the health and beauty category.
What really kick-started Well.ca was its offer of free shipping. "The key was turning on the free shipping. As soon as we did that, you could see a big jump in our growth," Mr. Asaria says.
Earlier, Mr. Asaria joined us to discuss his company's breakthrough.
Dave Michaels, globeandmail.com: Welcome, Ali. Glad you could join us today and share your advice. We have lots of questions, so let's get right to them:
Noor Syed from Ottawa writes: Hello Ali, congratulations on your success. I hope you can help an aspiring online entrepreneur by answering two questions: 1.) Your shopping cart software seems wonderful. How can I implement something like that on my website? 2.) Can you please expound a little bit more on how you made the connections with distributors and how they ship on demand for you? Thanks a lot.
Ali Asaria: Thank you for your kind words.
As for our funky, animated shopping cart, that was built in-house. I had the funny idea of making the products actually "fly" into the cart one night, so I built that part in a day as a test. People liked it so we kept it in the product. You can see more about how we developed at our technology showcase website, http://labs.well.ca.
Regarding our close relationships with our distributors, this was something that grew over time. Many of them would only deliver to us once or twice a week (if we could get them to work with us at all). We did the best we could at the time and focused on growing with what we had. But every month, we would e-mail them with our new sales figures.
When negotiating with any partner your strategy must be to find out what they want most. When working with many distributors, often it's the regional sales reps who want to increase their local sales numbers. So you have to show them that you will increase their sales if they're willing to work with you more closely. That requires building trust and demonstrating growth.
David Austin from Toronto writes: Mr. Asaria, you mention your use of partners for distribution and shipping. Can you expand on this point, and discuss how this plays into your ability to offer free shipping to anywhere in Canada regardless of order size? Are you dealing with centralized or regional distributors, or both?
Ali Asaria: Our close distributor relationships are not directly connected to our ability to offer free shipping. However, we have a general philosophy of being lean on the back-end, and our connections to distributors works into that philosophy. Our desire to offer free shipping comes from an opposite place: we have a desire to "wow" our customers on the front-end. So our leanness behind the scenes enables us to be generous on the front stage.
To answer your second question, we deal with all sorts of distributors, large and small. We want to work with partners that share our vision and are willing to grow with us.
P.K. from Ajax, Canada, writes: How do you garner market online with so much competition for the same type of product? In other words, what can distinguish you from the rest - apart from your product?
Ali Asaria: You're right: most of the items we sell are not exclusive to our store. That's why we had to rethink our definition of uniqueness. For Well.ca, that came with the realization that our product is not the items in the box, but the actual shopping experience. We aim to distinguish ourselves with extraordinary selection, ease of use, and customer service.
