Part 1 : Career path and sales

Now Leslie, physics teacher to software reviewer to soup guru is quite a transition. You want to explain that to us?
I love computers - and I like people. Put these together and my job progression looks a little bit more reasonable! The first computer I ever used was an IBM 360 - and that makes me very, very old! Actually, I've been using computers - mainframe to minis to micros - for over 36 years! I've written award-winning educational software, done a significant stint (over 10 years) as a software reviewer, and now get my kicks by representing one of the best little soup companies in the world.

And of course all the teachers out there know that being a teacher is being a people person! So, in fact, is writing and reviewing. You must constantly think of your audience - it's a one-on-one conversation! And today, I just love it when the phone rings or a customer sends an email - personal service at its most immediate and direct!

And when they tell me stories like Judy Wall's Fishing tale - just cracks me up! Turns out her brother was in charge of cooking a meal for the 7 tough guys at their annual fish camp - and decided to try our Chicken Noodle Soup. Put it on - and when his back was turned - some joker decided to add more noodles! Ended up with Noodle Soup Casserole! And this is the kicker - the 7 of them finished the entire thing - all 23 servings! Voted it best meal of the week! And her brother never even got a taste! Guess what's on the shopping list for this year's camp?

You can't pay for that kind of PR!

What are your actual responsibilities? What does a typical day involve?
I'm the webmaster - and while my basic job is to promote, maintain, and modify the site, I also personally approve every product we sell. If I don't love it, I'm not selling it! We offer a 100% money back - Love it or else guarantee - and I don't want to risk disappointing anyone! We also do Outrageous Customer Service - everyone always gets more than they bargained for, and that is mostly my job.

Even though our number of orders per day is fairly large for a small site (we average about 200 a week - though yesterday alone we got 140), there aren't that many customer service issues. I can pretty well keep up with the job - as long as I never take a holiday!

Other jobs - I coordinate inventory levels with the people in production, do the graphic arts on the site, the flyers, even the labels. Sometimes, depending on how busy everyone else is - I might even do invoicing!

E.D.Foods is basically a tiny (3 women) company inside of a larger company. So there's a lot of different jobs that have to be done, and we try to share the load. Yes - I have even done packing!

OK, let's look at your store - what kind of sales volume are we talking about here and what kind of margins are you getting?
Last year my sales from the website were well over US$250,000. I'm hoping this year to do over US$500,000. This said, our margins aren't that large because the products I sell - primarily soup - are not perceived as very expensive items. There is a very clear limit to how much people will pay for soup - even really really good soup! Plus, to get people to even try our soup, we have to offer a free sample - and our free sample is soup for 23! Not a small pouch, obviously! Even though we charge US$2.75 s/h, that doesn't actually cover the cost of shipping.

Fortunately, our soups are really amazing - and people come back quite quickly to get more! Of course they also tell 10 friends, so for every customer that comes back to re-order, there are lots more that place new free sample orders.

Continued...