James Maguire

Earlier this year, downsized from his job and with a new baby on the way, the pressure was on Shawn Ellis to find new income — starting a business made sense, but he wanted to begin immediately, without waiting for luxuries like staff and extensive financing. With a desire to generate revenue as soon as […]

As the owner of MFW Vacation Rentals, Cheryl Quist needs to reach an almost invisible sliver of the Internet audience: People looking for short-term rentals near the little town of Mendicino, Calif. Her company manages six rental homes in the Mendicino area. These luxury bungalows — with names like Chez Baleine where you can “watch […]

In a perfect world, all of your customers would be able to pay for their purchases with credit cards, but if you sell small-ticket items such music downloads, newspaper articles, trading cards, fonts and so on, that isn’t feasible. The good news is that there is an alternative to credit cards, enabling e-retailers to make […]

Yes, GiftTree sells gifts online, but no, its goal is not to be an Internet gift shop. Instead, explains company CEO Craig Bowen, the site is a gift services company. The difference may be slight to an outsider, but it makes all the difference in the site’s e-commerce strategy. As a gifts services company, GiftTree’s […]

Jon Abolins is a man who thinks about Internet sales tax far more than might be considered healthy. As vice president of Tax and Government Affairs for Velosant, a tax software company, he studies every nook and cranny of the arcane Net sales tax debate. Velosant’s software, Taxware, is a leader in helping collect and […]

Many e-commerce businesses approach Internet sales tax the same way they face a trip to the dentist: It’s a necessary chore but it creates no warm fuzzies. And if it can be kept to a minimum, all the better. Currently, of course, sales tax law favors online merchants. Since e-commerce businesses charge sales tax only […]

At first glance, Guild.com is a pretty standard e-commerce business. The Madison, Wisconsin-based site is a fine arts and home decor retailer, selling original works by about 650 artists across the country. The site’s shoppers browse among its collection of oil paintings, decorative glass sculpture and handcrafted furniture. But while an online arts site is […]

Visit DollarDays.com and you’ll see one of the Internet’s most unlikely selections of merchandise. Leather jackets sit next to Christmas decorations. Toothbrushes and shampoo are juxtaposed to Angelina Jolie calendars, while furniture repair tools and electric guitar shaped telephones are side by side with women’s hosiery. “Because we have over 25,000 products, we have an […]

When West Marine bought its biggest competitor, BoatUS, earlier this year, it faced a logistical dilemma. West Marine already sold some 50,000 boating products on its site, and with the acquisition of BoatUS, an additional 20,000 SKUs needed to be incorporated. The site wanted to maintain the two lines’ distinct brand identity, yet needed to […]

As an online bookseller, Alibris competes in a market dominated by e-commerce mega-sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. But next to these giants, Alibris is tiny. Compared with Amazon’s 36.9 million unique visits in July 2003, Alibris got 535,000 unique visits, according to comScore Media Metrix. In contrast to Barnes & Noble’s market capitalization […]

When MountainZone president Greg Prosl talks about the business strategy of the adventure sports site he runs, he can’t resist a chuckle. “It all comes down to ‘the three C’s,’” he says, “content, community and commerce.” It’s the motto “the three C’s” that elicits a laugh from Prosl: The mantra is so often used by […]

To understand how Ray Elsey built his online business, you have to go back to the time before the Internet, before the shopping mall, back to the era of the little corner shop. These stores were usually homey little affairs, low on flash, but the proprietors worked with customers individually, and they were typically lifelong […]