Volusion customer, LA Plates, was recently featured on the CBS Early Show to promote their personalized melamine plates. Owner and product designer, Lara Hazelett Sheton, has created a successful online business with Volusion, selling more than 20,000 custom plates to several major celebrities, including the Obama family.

The success stories just keep pouring in! Today we’re honored to highlight another major online retailer: Volusion customer, Lara Hazelett Shelton, was recently featured on the widely viewed CBS Early Show where she got the chance to promote her high-quality melamine plates to millions of American viewers.

In two short years, LA Plates (www.laplates.com) has sold a whopping 20,000+ melamine plates using our software and services. Many of these plates have made their way to the dining tables of several A-list celebrities, including the White House!

Flexibility was one of the core drivers in starting this budding online business. Serving as a teacher and proud mother of two young boys, Lara was looking for a business that allowed her to stay at home to raise her children. As an avid collector of china, Lara decided to turn her love for entertaining with kid-friendly, stylish place settings into a business. The dream started to become a reality.

Not having a background in computers or technology, Lara’s business needed a shopping cart solution that was easy to use. More importantly, selling such deeply customizable plates required a flexible platform – shoppers needed to choose from an endless variety of designs, colors, fonts and patterns. After researching several providers, Lara decided that Volusion provided all of the necessities in launching her online store.

Lara was able to launch her fully functional ecommerce site within a month, without relying on expensive design firms or an internal technical staff. Today, LA Plates sells more than 20 different patterns that can be customized with 16 colors, 8 fonts and an endless number of personal monograms.

Lara had the following to say about getting the business started:

“I don’t think we would have grown as fast without Volusion…their platform gives me the flexibility to expand product selection and give customers endless options. Volusion’s SEO tool is great. I’m not a technical person and I’ve gotten a lot of SEO. We’re currently ranked five using our Google keywords. I didn’t have a set business plan and the flexibility of the Volusion software has allowed me to add new products and market them appropriately as my business has grown.”

Two years later, Lara has shared her products and expertise with major publications like Living, Bazaar, Cookie, Self and Lucky. She has also been successful in getting picked up by “preppy” and “mommy” bloggers, which has helped increase her online sales. Another exciting effort is in relation to celebrities – landing these endorsements has been huge for Lara’s business. With friends in Hollywood, her products have been delivered to A-list celebrities. LA Plates has also been on display for major events like the American Music Awards and the Grammys. According to Lara, once celebrities love your products, others are sure to follow suit. Great advice!

A major congratulations to Lara and LA Plates for sharing their amazing story with us – we’re honored to be your ecommerce provider.

Happy Selling!
-Matt Winn, Marketing Associate

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Check out our live blogging event to receive a virtual backstage pass into the annual KIIS FM Grammy Gifting Suite. We’ll be following longtime Volusion storeowner, Andrea with Repeat Possessions, as she rubs elbows with celebrities at this major industry event!

Here at Volusion we’re always excited to hear about our customers’ success stories. This one in particular really jumped out at us: longtime customer, Repeat Possessions, has been selected to participate in the ultra-exclusive KIIS FM Grammy Gifting Suite. This glamorous Grammy pre-party has earned a reputation for having top-tier products distributed to stars on the Hollywood A-list. The owner of Repeat Possessions, Andrea, has generously invited us to ride along her breakthrough journey. We’ll be adding pictures, tweets and snippets of the party all day, so stay tuned!

So how did this all happen – how did Andrea make it all the way to the biggest event in music? It all started in 2007 when Repeat Possessions opened their doors online. Andrea decided to start her online store after wasting too much time and money clothes shopping for her four children. Thus, the mission of Repeat Possessions is to deliver high quality products and great priced items, all with the I Want it Now motto. The successful online store offers stylish clothing, shoes and accessories for woman and teen fashionistas. The business also has an insider’s edge in carrying top lines like Niki Biki Apparel.

Andrea has grown her business with Volusion since the fall of 2007. Like most of our customers, she has no programming experience. She attributes learning the ins and outs of the shopping cart software to the 24×7 support team who always teaches her something new. Repeat Possessions continuously receives personal “thank you” messages from satisfied customers, which is what Andrea loves most about selling online. With the love and support from her family, she has achieved what she calls true success – “raising a wonderful, respectful, loving, educated family while teaching them how to succeed in life and having responsibilities to what your passion is.” Talk about a success story! (more…)

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As seen on ABC’s Shark Tank, Kimberly Cayce with gokalyx.com was recently featured in Apparel Magazine. KALYX moved to Volusion from another provider only a few weeks before their breakthrough appearance on the hit TV show. The Volusion team was able to create a fully custom website design and help Kimberly successfully build her online store before airing. Immediately after the show’s broadcast, gokalyx.com received over 6,000 visitors and $4,000 in sales. Check out the article from Apparel Magazine below.

KALYX Swims With”Shark Tank” (Without Its E-Commerce Site Being Eaten Alive)
By Michael D. Cole

The revamped KALYX site went live the day of “Shark Tank”. Following its debut, the company reports site handled more than 6,000 visitors and $4,000 in orders the day of the show without any errors, downtime or technical difficulties.

The previous KALYX website was built as a placeholder, according to the company, using basic template designs from another provider during the company’s initial start-up phase. According to Cayce, the solution was too elementary and “didn’t adequately portray KALYX as a real player in the competitive athletic apparel market.”

KALYX reports Volusion’s built-in search engine optimization capabilities have helped its website move to the first page on many Google searches. And Cayce said the company saved thousands of dollars in web design costs.

“While we didn’t get funding, we received hope and encouragement from thousands of viewers to keep moving forward,” Cayce said. “As our company grows we’re glad to know that we now have the infrastructure and expertise necessary to meet the demands of a larger company.”

Congratulations to KALYX for such a successful debut!

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Throughout the month of November we will be running our “SMB blog series.” While SMB traditionally refers to “Small/Medium Business,” here at Volusion it has come to mean something else: “Small Made Big.” This month we will be sharing resources, tips, stats, and inspirations to help you turn your small ecommerce endeavor into something greater- something BIG!

If you’re a regular reader you’ve probably noticed that we run a Volusion success story about once a month. Each success story features a Volusion client that has made it big with their business. If you haven’t read them, here’s a quick summary of our most recent success stories, as well as the business lesson to take away from each story:

• HockeyShot
  In two years, JP Brun managed to create one of the busiest hockey training sites on the web. His clientele ranges from beginners to international hockey stars and his markets include the US, Canada, and all of Europe. Moving to Volusion’s platform gave his company the boost in efficiency that they needed to be able to grow the business by more than 300% last year.
  Business Lesson: Choosing the right tools can have a huge impact on the future of your business!
• AceTool
  In the three years that Maria Polidoro has had her online store with Volusion, it has climbed the search engine ranks and now is surpassing most of its competitors in the highly competitive industry of hand and power tools. Their SEO investments have paid off significantly!
  Business Lesson: Invest in your future! (more…)

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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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