That sounds really heavy-duty, but really, it was four guys who don't look like anything special sitting around and talking about what we've learned about running a web site, and where we can go from here to continue to turn TechSideline.com into a profitable (i.e., long-term) business. There's no doubt that the web site has been a ball for all parties involved, but we've got to continue to nurture it as a business, too.

One of the things we talked about in detail, as you can imagine, is TechLocker.com. TechLocker is one of the three "revenue streams" that we're hanging our hat on as being vital to the success of TechSideline.com. Advertising and the TSL Extra are the other two.

It has been interesting to watch sales wax and wane at TechLocker.com in the 18 or so months it has been open, since November 1999. As you can imagine, the euphoria over Tech's undefeated 1999 season got TechLocker off to a great start. We sold a ton of Sugar Bowl apparel, of course, even though I didn�t think much of our designs (the recent Gator Bowl stuff that we carried in TechLocker was much better, I thought).

After tailing off in early-mid 2000, sales picked up again during the 2000 football season, and then TechLocker blew the doors off in December of 2000, as the Christmas season led to a boom in sales.

But the first three months of 2001, when compared with the first three months of 2000, reveal something disturbing for a young business that must increase sales in order to become profitable: namely, sales were not increasing. In fact, they were down. Sales of TechLocker.com merchandise for the January-March time period of 2001 fell 9.5% from the same time period in 2000.

Thanks to the advent of the TSL Extra and some meager income from banner ads, total revenue for TechSideline.com as a whole is up significantly over this time last year. Yes, we still have quite a bit of ground to cover if we want to become profitable, but we're on the right track. But still, the fact that TechLocker.com merchandise sales are flat is a cause for concern.

It's not as if we don't understand why, though. TechLocker's case is symptomatic of some problems that are unique to TechLocker.com, as well as some problems that plague e-commerce as an industry. Here's a laundry list of things we have learned about e-commerce, and TechLocker.com's individual situation, that I thought you might find of interest.

First of all, let's be honest: as a shopping experience, e-shopping can't hold a candle to a trip to the mall, or in our case, Tech Bookstore.

It's funny. Everyone thought that e-commerce was going to take over the world. Many pundits thought the strip malls, stores, and malls of the world were on their way to becoming the dinosaurs of shopping, soon to be crumbling graveyards of storefronts that once thrived but would soon have tumbleweeds blowing across their landscape.

Not so. People like shopping, we have discovered. They like getting out of the house and heading down to the mall. They like taking the kids with them, getting a bite to eat at the food court, and running into friends they know while they're out.

What people don't necessarily like is sitting down in front of their computer to "go shopping." Sure, you can do it in your underwear, but it's just not the social experience that true physical shopping is.

Now granted, some things are easier to find and buy on-line. You can find a lot of stuff at Ebay and specialty on-line stores that you would never find at your local mall. But in general, the on-line shopping experience isn't as fulfilling as the physical shopping experience.

And when you're talking about Tech apparel, it's no contest: Hokie fans love to walk into Tech Bookstore, University Bookstore, or Volume II and just walk around amidst all the orange and maroon stuff. It's a sensory experience that is completely different and more fulfilling than sitting at your computer waiting for thirteen tiny pictures of T-shirts to download. There's no way that beats staring at a wall full of 25 T-shirts and taking them in visually all at once, with no waiting.

So yeah, going to one of the Tech bookstores is more fun than e-shopping. But e-shopping definitely has its time and its place.

Yes, Tech Bookstore is great, if you can get to it. But if you're a displaced Hokie living in Arizona, California, Texas, or Florida, then it's not just a question of driving a few minutes to downtown Blacksburg.

This is where e-shopping fills a void. For Hokies who are far away, TechLocker.com is their Tech Bookstore. They log onto it, and to them, the thirteen tiny pictures of Tech t-shirts are indeed their own little heaven. They could sit at TechLocker.com all day, pulling up first the t-shirts, then the polo shirts, then the outerwear, then the glassware � you get the idea.

E-commerce does what physical shopping could never do, similar to what catalog shopping does: extend the physical storefront far beyond its ordinary reach.

There's one other place where e-shopping excels: at Christmas time and gift-giving times. Most people like to shop at a physical store when shopping for themselves, but they often loathe shopping for other people, and making a trip to the mall in late November and December can be a maddening experience.

It's times like those when e-shopping is a godsend. It's times like those when you want to be able to just sit in front of your computer and wipe out your Christmas list, without having to leave the house. Last Christmas, I bought gifts for my nephew from Amazon.com and for my brother (a UVa grad) from TheSabreShop.com, and it was quick and easy. To say that I was thrilled to get the job of Christmas shopping for them done in just half an hour is vastly understating it. I went around the rest of the day humming "I Love the Internet" under my breath.

(Don't bother trying to find the words and music -- I made it up myself, right there on the spot.)

And TechLocker.com's year-2000 sales statistics support that theory. Fully one-third of TechLocker.com's business was done in the month of December last year. One-third. Sure, the Christmas shopping season is big for retailers, but one-third? That says something about our business.

There's one more factor that has flattened TechLocker.com's sales: the success of the Hokie football team.

Say what? Shouldn't that increase sales?

Yes and no. The 1999 Sugar Bowl season led to a great increase in the sale of Virginia Tech-related items, but the problem is, it created a glut in the market place. Every johnny-come-lately who wanted to get rich quick threw together every bauble and t-shirt they could think of, and Hokie fans sucked the goods up at unprecedented rates.

Now what have you got? Thousands of Hokie fans with plenty of shirts, hats, pants, and jackets who don�t really need anything else with a VT on it right now.

The fact that first quarter 2001 sales are down a slight bit from first quarter 2000 sales is not surprising. January through March of 2000 was the tail-end of the Sugar Bowl boom, so those months were probably a peak in sales for Tech-related items for that time of year. Had the Hokies not gone undefeated in 1999, sales in early 2000 probably would have been much lower, and therefore, the sales figures we're seeing in early 2001 would be higher, and would represent normal growth.

But instead, sales are down in 2001 because (a) they were abnormally high in 2000, and (b) last year's buying spree flooded the market with product, further decreasing this year's sales.

I have been told lately by some of TechSideline.com's best supporters, "Will, I would buy something from TechLocker, but to be honest, I don�t need anything right now. I've got all the Tech stuff I want."

As one TSL supporter phrased it, "I'm all bought out."

So, those are the reasons why our merchandise sales are flat, despite the fact that our traffic figures for early 2001 are up more than 2-to-1 over our traffic figures for early 2000.

That's a very interesting analysis, to me, anyway. You may not care, and may have tuned out by now to read the rest of this issue or go watch TV. But it begs the question: knowing those things, now what do we do?

To help bring TechSideline.com to profitability, we need to do three things:

• Land some corporate sponsorship/advertising;
• Boost the TSLX subscription numbers from their current level of just over 700 to the 2500-3000 range; and
• Double TechLocker.com sales (at least).

Items 1 and 2 are something that may or may not be discussed some other time. The remainder of this article deals with how we're planning to achieve objective #3, despite the roadblocks I've outlined here.

Here's what we're going to do:

1.) Do a better job of marketing TechLocker.com as a gift fulfillment center.

As I noted above, people may or may not be interested in shopping on-line for themselves, but they love shopping on-line for someone else, particularly around Christmas time. The convenience of on-line shopping can't be beat during the holiday season.

So we're taking some steps to make people think of TechLocker.com not just as a place to buy Hokie stuff, but as a place to buy Hokie gifts for other people.

We're going to add gift certificate capability, which will enable you to buy a gift certificate worth any amount you desire, and have the certificate emailed to the person of your choice. Your card will get billed, they'll get the gift certificate via email, and they'll be able to go shopping at TechLocker.com and use the gift certificate as credit.

To carry out the gift certificate at the time of purchase, we'll add a new box to the checkout procedure at TechLocker.com, and when the buyer types in a valid gift certificate number, they'll get credit for the value of the gift certificate. If they don't use it all at once, they can use the rest later. If they buy more than what the gift certificate will cover, then they'll have to pull out their own credit card to cover the difference.

We're also going to add a "send as gift" feature, just like what Amazon.com has. To use this, you shop, pick something out, and pay for it with your credit card. List the gift recipient's name and address for shipping, check a new "send as gift" box, and we'll let you type in a message that we'll print out and mail along with your gift.

Sure, you can give gifts from TechLocker.com right now just by entering the other person's information in the "Ship to" area, but the ability to type in a personalized gift note is a nice perk. That way, the person knows just who the gift is from and gets a nice note written by the giver.

Lastly, and just as importantly, we're going to add the capability to send the TSL Extra as a gift. There is currently no way to do this, but we're going to add it in. When we do, we'll probably send you a one-time email via our TSLX mailing list to let you know.

2.) Do a better job of marketing TechLocker.com, period.

You've probably noticed a few more "Featured Items" rolling through the home page lately, about 2-3 every week. We do this to let you know about all the great offerings at TechLocker.com, and to make you aware of the full breadth of the product lines.

Sometimes, the items that show up on the home page are ignored, and other times, they're gobbled up. We recently ran a "Pubs of Blacksburg" T-shirt as the Featured Item on the home page, and they flew right off the shelves. It seems many TechSideline visitors didn't know we even carried such an item and upon seeing it, they got a little uh, sentimental about their days at VT and bought the shirt.

Another step we're going to take to help us market the store is to create a voluntary TechSideline.com mailing list for people to sign up. We'll then use this list to email you updates to the site (so every time I post a new article, you'll get an email with a direct link to it), and occasionally, to let you know first about any special offers or new products that we have at TechLocker.com. We think the email list will be a great way to keep you up to speed on site updates, plus to let you know ahead of time about good deals at TechLocker.com.

3.) Update TechLocker.com's product lines.

This is something that is a little overdue. TechLocker has basically been carrying the same things since it opened in November of 1999, so it's time for an update. This will be a two-step process in which we'll have a sale on items that we no longer wish to carry, and then we'll use the proceeds from that sale to fund buying some new stuff to carry.

I've got a list of things I'd like to see: mainly more gameday items, like car flags and magnets; more ladies' and kids' apparel; and more maroon stuff. As the spring and summer go on, we'll work on carrying more of what you like and want to see, and don't be afraid to drop me an email at [email protected] and tell me what you would like to see us carry in TechLocker.com.

As I reread this article, I'm a little nervous about running it. The last few sections sound too much like a big promotional rah-rah piece for TechLocker.com, for one thing. And in the opening sections, I do the exact opposite, bashing the very thing (on-line shopping) that we're trying to improve.

But after all, this is "Inside TSL." I created this column with the intent of giving you a peek at what we're thinking and doing behind the scenes of TechSideline.com, and our plans for TechLocker.com are a big part of what we're thinking and doing.

Still, I'm reminded of the Marvel comic books I used to read as a kid, back in the 70's -- Spider-man, the Incredible Hulk, and the Fantastic Four, to name a few. In each issue, Marvel president/chairman/CEO Stan Lee had a column that he called "Stan's Soapbox," where he would write about something related to Marvel Comics and what they were up to.

At first, it was neat, but after a while, all Stan Lee did was hype whatever the next buying opportunity was, trying to promote the next thing that Marvel Comics was doing, no matter how lousy and stupid it might be. Stan quit talking about issues that affected comics as a whole and started using "Stan's Soapbox" to just sell things. Blech. After a while, with all the exclamation points he included in his writing, he started to sound like a total idiot, even to my young mind. And there's nothing worse than an adult who sounds like an idiot to a child.

I don�t want to be like Stan Lee, so I promise I won't use "Inside TSL" to promote what we're doing and to attempt to get you to buy stuff. Cross my heart, hope to die.

I do remember one of those old "Stan's Soapbox" articles from the 70's, though. Stan wrote something like:

"I was giving a speech at Virginia Polytechnic Institute the other day, and one of the college kids in the audience asked me�."

I can't remember what the question was, and I have no clue which of the comic books I would have to dig up out of my old collection to find that column, but I think that's pretty neat -- Stan the Man visiting Tech back in the 70's to talk about Spider-man and Marvel Comics.

As we like to say on the message board, "And that makes this Tech-related." I'm outta here, folks. See you next month!

TSLX Home