Merchant Stories: Bitterroot Guitars | Volusion

We love to listen to tales about our retailers’ ecommerce journeys, so we’re sharing them so that you can get pleasure from as effectively. Learn on to find out about how Bitterroot Guitars has discovered success with their on-line retailer (through John and Sheryl Hildreth, NAMM Members).

What impressed you to begin your on-line retailer?

Initially out of boredom, frustration with a job, and long-term view of enterprise for retirement. We began our preliminary retailer on Ebay 1998, then expanded to our personal web site in 2007 earlier than shifting to Volusion. We have been in search of a singular area of interest that was underserved, and located the guitar components enterprise to be an attention-grabbing area of interest. As a guitar builder (passion initially), I (John) was very within the components wanted to construct guitars. As now we have grown, I proceed to construct guitars and have accomplished simply over 400. We use these builds to show our components and engineering on merchandise. Most of our builds over the past 10 years have been donated to charities—many to the Alzheimer’s Group in Lake Geneva, WI.

What’s your favourite a part of operating an ecommerce enterprise?

This enterprise began from a passion and continues to develop and form itself. It’s now full time for us. Most prospects are very shocked after they discover out now we have old style service—sure, we reply our telephones! My spouse (Sheryl) has been very concerned within the enterprise since 2012 and has been very instrumental in rising a variety of the gross sales. Phrase-of-mouth nonetheless works despite on-line platforms.

What do you want most about Volusion’s ecommerce answer?

We like that it’s simple to make use of. Volusion has been responsive in working with us on most issues—tech help is mostly proper there and really useful, responding in any respect hours. We did a serious refresh on the location two years in the past by way of Develop With Studio, which has additionally helped quite a bit.

What’s the finest piece of recommendation you’ve acquired about operating your online business?

Make it your personal, personal your issues, and excel at customer support—transcend the norm and be higher than the competitors. The craziest factor now we have found is that we reply our telephones, however a lot of the competitors doesn’t. It’s a easy answer that works nice. You can’t think about prospects’ reactions to somebody really serving to them on the cellphone.

What does the long run maintain for your online business?

We’re persevering with to increase merchandise and options and are additionally trying to help a video coaching website for our product options. At the moment, we’re beginning to attend native swap meets and builder occasions across the US.