JP Brun is a 27 year-old lifelong hockey enthusiast from New Brunswick, Canada. He is also co-owner of one of the most popular hockey stores online. Because of their worldwide online presence, HockeyShot has almost become synonymous with the sport of hockey.

HockeyShot.com (and its Canadian counterpart HockeyShot.ca) offer more than 700 hockey training products to help hockey players of all levels hone their skills. We caught up to JP to discuss what has made HockeyShot so successful. Here’s the insight he shared with us:

Volusion: When did you first start HockeyShot.com as an online business?
JP: The HockeyShot.com online store with full product line-up started in 2007. We have been with Volusion since March of 2008.

Volusion: Why did you decide to change providers and move your online store to Volusion?
JP: We moved due to the frustration of always having to contact programmers to customize work for us to help meet our online store needs. Our last shopping cart simply did not have nearly enough features to operate efficiently. There were many tasks that required manual data entry and time with our old cart, which are now automated with Volusion’s cart.

Volusion has helped us become a much more efficient online store, and permit us to focus more on sales and marketing to grow our business. Since going with Volusion, our sales have increased over 300%.

Volusion: Wow, that’s a huge increase! Which Volusion features in particular do you think helped contribute to that growth? (more…)

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About once a month we sit down and decide which company we’d like to feature in a success story for our blog. This month one company stood out to us, because well… they’re standing out for pretty much everyone right now.

AceTool.com is a nationally known online retailer of hand and power tools and accessories and have been with Volusion since 2006. We spoke with Maria Polidoro, owner of AceTool.com, about her thriving business. Here is what we learned:

Volusion: Can you briefly describe your business for our readers?
Maria: Ace Tool is a leader in retail tool sales. We also do repairs and carry a huge array of accessories and parts.

Volusion: I understand that you have a retail store, tell us a little bit more about that.
Maria: I founded Ace Tool in 1983 in Wantagh, NY. It grew out of the desire to bring the best quality products and service to this community. We don’t just sell the best tools, we host demonstrations in our store, and repair everything on site. Our online business flourished from there with the help of some great partners like Volusion.

Volusion: Did you start out with Volusion or were you using another ecommerce provider previously?
Maria: Ace Tool actually went live in 2005, so we did move our online store to Volusion from another provider. We made this decision due to the fact that our previous provider charged us a percentage of every sale that we made through them.

Volusion: What role would you say Volusion has played in your success?
Maria: Volusion has made it easier to run our store with the ease of product uploads, the simple search engine optimization, and the abundance of features that make it quick and simple to get our products as visible as possible to our customers. (more…)

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In 2006 Loren Taylor moved his water fountain website www.SoothingWalls.com to the Volusion platform. As he explains, “I tried several ecommerce solutions and none compared to the options and flexibility that Volusion offered. I was instantly sold on their service.” But his move to Volusion was just the beginning!

It’s A Success!

After getting SoothingWalls up and running, sales just snowballed. From 2007 to 2008 SoothingWalls saw revenue grow 600%, but this massive surge did not slow Loren down- SoothingWalls is on record to grow an additional 100% by the end of this year.

Currently Loren is maintaining www.SoothingWalls.com and www.ethanpaulfountains.com, but within the last three years Loren has opened a total of 10 online stores with Volusion, so it’s anyone’s guess as to how many stores he’ll have running at this time next year.

Loren has a natural entrepreneurial spirit. He’s tried it all and he’s succeeded in a big way! So what advice can he give to fellow online store owners? Simply put, Loren advises, “Don’t give up too easy.  Volusion offers the tools to succeed online, just have faith in yourself and your products.” (more…)

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In the 1980’s Wayne Parker’s wildly popular Canadian band “Glass Tiger” won five Juno Awards. (Even if you do not know the band by name you definitely know their biggest hit “Don’t Forget Me When I’m Gone.”) Today the band still plays together sometimes (in fact, Wayne recently picked up his electric bass for a concert Glass Tiger put on in Afghanistan for the troops) but these days Wayne’s biggest passion is managing his online astronomy store. As the owner of SkyShed Observatories, Wayne runs the popular sites www.skyshed.com and www.skyshedpod.com - providing resources and news for astronomers of all levels. His products are even being used in the NASA sponsored Automated Meteor Observatory project! His online store with Volusion (www.skyshedpodcheckout.com) has been incredibly successful over the last year and a half. We interviewed Wayne about the success he has had running an online store. Here are his responses: (more…)

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In 2005 Rick and Gela Oros opened their online generator store www.APelectric.com using AspDotNetStorefront, but the lack of communication between the AspDotNetStorefront and the hosting company was getting very costly as the site would be down for hours without response when technical problems arose. Rick and Gela finally moved the store over to Volusion in October of 2008, and the difference was immediately noticeable! While they were using AspDotNetStorefront their monthly sales for www.APelectric.com never exceeded more than $600,000 but in their first full month online with Volusion www.APelectric.com brought in over $1,000,000 in sales. Rick and Gela are benefiting from (more…)

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