Leslie and Rick Roman compete in one of the most dog-eat-dog industries in the world: gifts. There is no shortage of gift types and channels to buy them. Yet the Romans have carved out a home-based niche with their decade-old company GiveAshare.com sells one-share ownership of over 100 different companies including Disney, Harley, Starbucks, and McDonald's. The recipient becomes a real shareholder of the company, gets the authentic paper stock certificate, which brokers no longer provide, and is entitled to all shareholder perks like declared dividends and annual reports. It takes two minutes to order.
GiveAcaricature.com sells hand-drawn, custom caricatures from photos. Customers upload one or more photos, describe any scene and our artists create artwork that captures likeness, interests, memories and even quirks of the subjects. We just added social media icons to GiveAcaricature that are simple caricatures to be used for blogs, forums, the web and email signatures. GiveAmasterpiece.com sells personal fine art from a photo. A customer uploads a file, picks a style -- like oil, watercolor, sketch, Lichtenstein -- picks a medium such as print, canvas or frame, and our artists hand draw or paint the masterpiece. GiveAurl.com is the only place that sells personal domain names packaged as a gift.
Describe the competitive environment in which your business operates.
The gift market is very competitive especially with today's economy. Overall, our gifts are very hard to mimic. The competition for each product is different. On the GiveAshare.com business there is one major competitor that is bigger but we are more nimble -- there are some smaller competitors of lesser quality. Some have gone out of business and no new entrants are expected because paper stock certificates are on their way out. Right now we are in a sweet spot because of the industry-wide effort to eliminate paper stock certificates. Brokers have stopped so if someone wants a paper stock certificate they come to us. These will become valuable collectibles.
Why did you start the company/business?
We started GiveAshare.com in 2002 when the company Rick was working for was going bankrupt. We are both finance people. The idea was conceived 25 years ago before discount brokers when the cost to get one share was too difficult and very expensive. Although discount brokers brought commissions down, it was still hard to buy because it required setting up a brokerage account, funding the account, placing the order, changing the name then getting the stock certificate. Brokers started charging large fees for paper certificates and now do not do it at all. Given our finance background, we had always given stock as a clever and more meaningful gift -- we started with the Boston Celtics -- and after seeing the response, we thought it would be a good business to start, to make it easy for someone to do it at a reasonable cost. So in two minutes and a credit card, you are all set.
Our other gift ideas were started in order to capitalize on traffic, to diversify away from a business that would go away with the demise of paper stock certificates, and to add some breadth.
What are the biggest mistakes you have made in your business?
- Not entering a market soon enough. We had a late start on GiveAshare - the market was ripe earlier and now the writing is on the wall with the eventual demise of paper stock certificates. Early entrance also helps in search engine positioning, which favors older websites.
- Not establishing a broader presence faster. Getting our products listed in various places earlier thereby locking out others would have helped.
- Not investing early enough in a flexible shopping cart. Because of our highly customized products, normal off-the-shelf shopping carts are too constraining. We pieced together a custom e-shop that works but was not nimble enough to easily add new things. Things are better now and a new e-shop effort is under way.
What are the best decisions you've made in your business?
- Hiring a programmer that has intimate knowledge of our systems and requirements helps us add capability and products in a timely manner.
- Switching from an Access database to SQL broadened our ability to extract and re-use data to make us much more efficient.
- Finding the most talented artists around with unique skills gives us art-related products that are superior.
What is your exit strategy from the business?
We have no intention of exiting. We plan on living a long time and plan on satisfying customers for a long time. This business enabled us to be more involved as our kids grew up because we worked from home.
Do you have entrepreneurial role models?
Rick's mom was always getting into little businesses -- nothing on a large scale but she was always creative and encouraging. Leslie and I worked at Motorola for 20 years and have applied many of the process-oriented skills that we learned. Also, had an opportunity to work with some founders at some small startups in Portland (OR) that really taught me how to roll with punches and be tenacious in evolving ideas until you find the recipe that works.