"What I learned there shaped everything I built afterward: customer service isn't about transactions. It's about understanding that every person who walks through your door is part of a larger ecosystem. They have families worried about them, doctors depending on accurate information, neighbors who help with rides. When you serve one person well, you're actually serving an entire network of relationships around them."
"The first product I ever sold online was a white Gildan 5000 t-shirt with "Stupid Cancer" printed across the front. I charged $20. I had no inventory system, no marketing funnel, no supply chain. I packed and shipped every order by hand from our Tribeca office in Lower Manhattan. That one shirt sparked something I never imagined: a six-figure ecommerce operation that turned customers into walking billboards, funded programs that mattered, and became one of the most exciting things I'd ever built."
Experience working at a small independent pharmacy taught that customer service is about serving a customer's broader network, not just transactions. Rebuilding trust with customers required attention to families, doctors, and community supports. Applying that principle to ecommerce led to selling a single printed t-shirt, priced at $20, with no formal systems, which was packed and shipped manually from a Tribeca office. That initial product grew into a six-figure operation that turned customers into walking billboards, funded meaningful programs, and demonstrated how mission-driven merchandise can scale impact and community engagement.
Read at Practical Ecommerce
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]