Website started in: 1996
Website Overview:SafetyStore.com was one of the very first websites to feature safety and emergency preparedness products for home, family, business and government. We began by t selling just listing just a few pages and about 40 hard-to-find items plus a handful of high quality first aid kits. At the time, we are told that there were less than 100,000 commercial websites in the world. The site grew by trial and error, but without outside investors. The internet was so new, most customers were unclear if we were a retailer, wholesaler or manufacturer, therefore customer requests gave us continual ideas to be more than just a local retailer. We were very flexible to the customers' needs and that flexibility opened many profitable opportunities we had not considered. With the coming innovations for the Internet, we were able to install true E-commerce software and continually expand to the thousands of products we sell today.
Notable firsts:
* After 6 months of being on-line hoping to be a local success, the first order was for about $100 worth of products shipping to South Korea. With our first sale we became an "international Internet Retailer.
* During the "Dot Com Boom" several well-funded companies tried to acquire us. Luckily, all flamed out before we could make up our mind. Not having investors before you work out the details of mkaing money turned out to be a hidden blessing. A non-funded business develops a high respect for each sale made and each dollar spent. This is opposed to companies that throw money at a problem and hope, somehow, that someone along the way will fix it.
* Around the year 2000, the popular e-commerce thought was to nottalk directly wih the customer. As a result ,many website issues went undiscovered, questions were unanswered and orders were not placed or cancelled. Sales departments had no connection to customers . Marketing departments did not get true feedback from non-purchasing customers. Talking to a Internet consumer to find out what they needed - was considered a waste of "Entrepreneur's" time. Whole industries sprung up including on-line surveys, paid focus groups, unrelated phone banks and much more. .
As we did not have the money for these costly consultants, we put a phone number and e-mail address on every page of our SafetyStore.com website. Customers could call us with questions, ask for large quotations of things both seen (and not seen) on the site, point out broken parts of our websites, and suggest new products to add. After the first Internet bubble burst, marketing companies were now crying out " that websites needed to engage and communicate with the customer." Our company was doing that a decade earlier with a early application we like to call - "A Working Telephone number" and "Knowledgable People..
Web Products: About 3,000 products with access to over 700,000 safety, emergency and medical products.
Brands : SafetyStore vests, emergency preparedness kits and Disastrous Advantage Kits and emergency operations systems.
Toll Free Number: (888) 723 -3897
Live Support: Monday-Friday 10am to 6pm EST ( excluding major holidays)
International Number: (434) 973-8030
Fax Number: (434) 973-4070
General E-mail: Customer Service
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