Net gain

Local small businesses rely on Internet sales

By KRISTI ALBERTSON

Flathead Business Journal

Andrew Grove, founder of Intel, predicted that in the future, all companies will be Internet companies.

It hasn't happened yet, but the Internet is playing an increasing role in a variety of companies. In the Flathead, businesses rely on the Internet for a variety of functions.

According to information from 152 local business owners and chief executive officers, collected by the Northwest Montana Business Expansion and Retention program, the majority - 74 percent - consider the Internet important to their business. Only 7 percent said it wasn't important at all.

E-mail is the most common way the business owners said they used the Internet. However, 76 percent said they had a business Web site, and most used the Web to buy or sell products and services.

Some businesses in the Flathead Valley could not survive without daily help from the Web.

As of yet, Santa Claus hasn't ditched his sleigh for FedEx, and the Easter Bunny isn't rolling out eggs on an assembly line. But the Tooth Fairy has gone high-tech, with a little help from Kalispell artist Dawn Duane Evans.

Evans designed a coin more befitting a fairy than American currency. She sells the fairy gold through her Web site, www.toothfairycoin.com. Nearly every morning, Evans finds new orders in her e-mail inbox from customers all over the world.

It began as a local business. Evans got involved when her son began losing his baby teeth. She looked with

a critical eye at the silver dollars he found under his pillow.

"I thought, that man on the front of that is bald, and he is ugly. If the Tooth Fairy was a real fairy, she would leave something beautiful," she said.

So Evans designed a new coin, with a delicate fairy on the front. But while it looked more like fairy currency, the coin had one obvious drawback: It had no monetary value.

Evans asked Valley Bank in Kalispell to back the money, and bank officials readily agreed. Each coin bore the bank's logo on the back and was worth $1.

It wasn't long, however, before the business took a new turn. Evans expected children to want to redeem the coins for cash; instead, few wanted to part with them. Families who bought the coins in Kalispell told friends who lived outside the valley about them, and soon Evans was getting calls from people all over the country who wanted to order the coins as keepsakes.

"They didn't care that they were redeemable," she said.

Within nine months, Evans took her business to the Internet. She still sells coins locally, but now out-of-state orders comprise the bulk of her business.

Many come from Virginia, and just about every seventh order is from California, she said. She also sends coins to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

To accommodate the out-of-town orders, Evans designed a new back for the coin. Without the Valley Bank logo and endorsement, they can't be spent, but those who order them don't care. They consider the coins something special they can give their children, and Evans loves being able to share the magic with them.

Corresponding with customers is one of her favorite parts of the business. Once, a mother of triplets submitted an order. Others purchase more than one set for a single child.

"They want to leave more than one coin under the pillow," she said.

No matter how many coins they purchase, parents are concerned about discretion. Evans is happy to help them keep the Tooth Fairy legend alive for their children.

"People who say, please leave it in an unmarked envelope, stuff like that - they're keeping the magic alive," she said.

The Internet has been a way for parents to do this, she added. They can submit orders at night after their children go to bed.

This is Evans' second year as a Tooth Fairy coin dealer. In September, she sold one or two sets a day. By the end of October, she had sold over twice as many coins in 2006 than she did the year before.

The business may grow even more if Evans can convince more banks to endorse the coins like Valley Bank does. But if many banks sign up, she may have to expand her business. Right now, Evans says she is comfortable with its size.

"It's building at a good rate," she said. "It's very manageable for one person."

MAINTAINING A manageable size is an important consideration at Rocky Mountain Images in Whitefish. The company's purpose is threefold: It markets promotional products, sells screen-printed items and is a garment-sourcing company for embroidered clothes.

Rocky Mountain Images does some local business, but the vast majority of its clientele is scattered across the country. It sells products to businesses and community colleges all over the United States.

But with only seven employees, the company tries to maintain a low profile on the Web. Appearing at or near the top of a search engine list would bring in more orders than their small operation could handle, explained Gary Elliott, co-founder and vice president of sales.

"Where we differ a bit from a lot of companies is we do not try to get high up on the hit list. The last thing I want is to get a lot of random hits on our site," he said. "If we got 1,000 hits a day, what would we do? The trolley would come off the tracks."

Elliott already spends anywhere from four to six hours online each day. Much of that time is spent wading through his inbox; he says he receives a couple of hundred e-mails every day. Virtually all the promotional products and orders are sent to suppliers via e-mail, and he has to e-mail artwork and purchase orders to clients.

It's a drastic change from where he was nine years ago when the business began.

"When we started in 1997, I didn't even know how to turn on a computer," he said.

Now Elliott is Internet- and design-savvy. He spends a lot of time helping customers figure out what kind of products the logos will work best on. The goal is to put a quality image on a quality product, he explained, so the item won't end up thrown in a drawer and forgotten.

"There's a great deal of difference between a logo you're going to put on a pen maybe a quarter-inch high or putting it one a banner like that one," he said, gesturing to the large sign hung behind Rocky Mountain Images' reception desk. "The very worst thing we can do, from our perspective, is to sell someone what I call 'desk trash.'"

To do this, it's important to establish good rapport with clients, he said. He wants customers to feel they're important as individuals, not just another sale.

Promotional consultant Joe Carbonari agreed.

"The Internet makes our business possible, but it can't do everything," he said. "Yes, the Internet will do a great deal for us, but you still need the face-to-face time."

But it's the Internet that creates opportunities for face time with clients all over the country.

"It's mind-boggling to me, the amount of technology available to us today that allows us to deal with clients all over the place," Elliott said.

He remembers one woman asking him why he lives in Whitefish to conduct business across the United States. Elliott looked her in the eye, and said, "Because I can."

She paused for a moment, dumbfounded, then laughed and nodded.

"She got it," Elliott said. "That's the great part of this business, is we can live here and do business anywhere in the world."

On the Net: http://www.rmimages.com