Business Opportunities Weblog

January 9, 2007 by Rich Whittle | 5 Comments

Globe and Mail:

Not that long ago, Cindy Goble could barely send an e-mail. Today, she spends a good part of her day peddling perfume and beauty products on the Internet, as the owner of web-based retailer Beautymark Corp.

Goble’s online career started in early 2004. She’d spent the past 10 years as a stay-at-home mom in London, Ont., and she’d been itching to get into business. “I was yearning for some kind of presence in the business world,” she says. But she was determined to still spend as she could with her two kids.

Then a friend told her about a skin-care product that was only available in the United States. “I thought, why not try to sell this cream—which was remarkable for stretch marks and also on wrinkles—in Canada?”

She holed up at the family cottage with a stack of books on how to operate an online business. “I read and highlighted and took notes,” she says. Then she hired a web designer to create a site and teach her to run it.

Beautymark Corp. launched in November, 2004. But a few months later, having only served a handful of customers, Goble knew two things had to happen for her business to work. She needed to find a way to stand out online, and she had to expand her product offering beyond skin care.

In the spring of 2005, Goble (with her husband’s help) began to submit her site to online directories like Yahoo and Best of the Web. The more directories that listed her site, the more likely it was that Beautymark would appear in an online search.

It worked. Goble went from fewer than 20 customers in September, 2005, to 100-plus that December. A year later, her business continues to grow.

Photo by Beautymark Corp..

In Internet, Niche, Sales, Startup, Women | 5 Comments