Solopreneur Bootstrapped a Niche E-commerce Venture to $12 Million

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It is very difficult to find gaps in e-commerce these days. Sawyer Twain Founder Chris Turner found one and executed the hell out of it.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Chris Turner: I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. I graduated from Arizona State University back in 2004.

Sramana Mitra: What did you study?

Chris Turner: Communications. I didn’t make it too difficult for myself.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after you came out of school?

Chris Turner: I got into marketing and advertising. It was in the auto industry. I was selling advertising to auto dealers across the nation. I did that for a few years. Then I ended up starting a dealership in Portland, Oregon.

Sramana Mitra: Car dealership?

Chris Turner: Yes. I became friends with one of my clients. I didn’t know about the retail aspect of it. I ended up moving to Oregon. I stayed there for eight years. It was quite the lesson overall being in the auto industry.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after that?

Chris Turner: That was the best decision that I should have made before even going out there in the first place. It’s not just cut out for everyone. It definitely wasn’t for me. I moved back to Phoenix. Along came e-commerce.

Sramana Mitra: What was the next career move?

Chris Turner: It was about getting involved with Sawyer Twain. It didn’t end well being in the auto industry. I learned a lot of things because I was incredibly unsuccessful, especially in the latter part. It wasn’t salvageable. I hung on for three to four years when I should have boxed it up. I was in over my head. I would say that a little bit of ego got in the way that it would be something that I could correct.

When I came back to Phoenix, I didn’t know what I wanted to get into right away. I was pretty exhausted, to be frank with you. I didn’t want to jump into a corporate job. I didn’t think that would suit me best. I just wanted to gather my thoughts and calm my head down. I took three or four months off.

During that time, I became friends with one of the largest distributors in the billiards industry William Lee. I knew nothing about billiards. I don’t even play pool to this day. I did know marketing pretty well. One thing that I noticed was that billiards didn’t really have an online presence. I couldn’t understand why. I found out really quickly that the biggest reason was because a lot of the manufacturers would only work with brick and mortar companies. You got to have a physical location for a lot of these brands to work with you.

Fortunately, Will and I became good friends. He decided he wanted to go into e-commerce and put pool tables online even with all the logistics obstacles. We went fully into it. We were one of the first to put pool tables and shuffle boards with a higher price point on Google PPC. Nobody else had done that.

Our conversation continues here .

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