Niche players face reality of online growth

Vacuumbags.com sells only one thing—vacuum cleaner bags for vacuum cleaners made by more than 50 different manufacturers. The company, which has one store in Oregon, went online in summer 2000. Greg McClellan, owner of Vacuumbags.com, says his niche business is doing well online but that the potential for getting too many orders would pose new challenges. “Right now we are able to maintain the orders in house. Our supplier is about an hour and a half from us so we can do one day turnaround. We get the items within 24 hours. But if I ran into the situation where I had a big increase in orders, I would have to hire another person to package them up. And I might have to get financing if it’s that way for day after day.” McClellan declined to say how many order the store gets online per day. He expects that adding such features as live help and increasing email marketing will result in higher conversion rates. But it’s all part of growing the online business. “We’re pretty pleased with the increase in business. It does become more expense but it’s also becoming more profitable.”