Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is iHeartRadio's Maryland Business Spotlight. Each week we hear
from one local business owner letting us know where they
are in their business journey and how they got there.
I'm here today with Ethan Giffen, founder and CEO of
groove Commerce. Ethan tell us about groove Commerce.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Groove Commerce we're an eighteen year old e commerce agency
that focuses on helping mid market manufacturers and brands that
want to do commerce online. So that could be helping
them build a direct to consumer sales channel, or that
could be helping them to build business to business buyers
portal where their trading partners can come in and order
(00:38):
their parts and products to be shipped to them. We
integrate those tools into their financial management systems, their ERP,
their warehouses, and then once we build those sites for
our customers, we like to say, put gas in the
car and help them with growth and retention marketing to
(00:59):
grow their revenue using different strategies.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Well that's fantastic, wow, And like, can you give an
example of a company or is that okay to do?
I'm just curious who you've helped.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, you know, an example of one of our clients
is Cutter and Buck, who is a manufacturer of clothing
and a pail out of the Pacific Northwest. They also
have a huge, a huge business line with customized clothing
maybe for athletic teams or for golf courses. So we
help them, We help them to build a direct to
(01:35):
consumer sales channel.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Well that's fantastic. Now, how did you get your start
with the groove commerce in this kind of business?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
So I started Groove about eighteen years ago, so seventeen
years in a handful of days. So we're just about
to become legal, so to speak. And so prior starting Groove,
I worked in Baltimore at a company called a Leigis Group,
a global staff and provider, and help them with their
(02:02):
Internet strategy. And after about eight and a half or
nine years, I decided to embark on my own adventure
and become an entrepreneur. I didn't have any gray hair
then and now I've got plenty, So it's it's been
quite an adventure. But you know, I really enjoyed working
there and learned a ton you know, you know, I
(02:24):
talk about it like it was my my mba. It
was such a fascinating place to uh to work and
to grow professionally and so really kind of set me
up for success when I started my own business.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Well, and what are the some of the things that
you've learned along the way, the biggest changes from when
you start a Groove commerce to where it is now,
whether it be technology or just how the business is run.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, I think I think you know all of it, right,
Like it's all changed. So when I started Groove, the
iPhone didn't exist yet. Oh yeah, right, And if you
just if you think about that as a concept for
somebody that you know, almost everybody's using their their iPhone
or their Android phones to surf the web and to
buy products and to do all the things with it, right,
(03:08):
And so that has been a new aspect of of
of our business. And you know, adapting to mobile and
tablet devices is an ever changing and ever changing piece.
We're also seeing just a huge amount of overall adoption.
So we work with manufacturers and distributors, and so many
(03:29):
of them know how to make their products and make
great fens, you know, make great products, but they don't
know about technology, and they definitely don't know about online
commerce usually, and so these are manufacturers that may have
done faxes for orders handwritten, handwritten you know, invoices or
order sheets, et cetera. And so, uh, you know, by
(03:52):
helping to take them online and get into that next year.
It's it's it's really transformed their businesses by doing it.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
It's such a fascinating thing, especially the kind of business you'reine,
because it must be constantly changing, right, I mean from
month to month, year to year at least.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Right. Well, it's interesting, you know, one of the things
that like it's always changing, but it's not, you know,
and if you kind of take it back to techniques
that old direct response marketers used to use, like postcards
and letters and billboards and all of those types of things,
you know, Like I kind of came up in my
career learning about all of that. And the thing is
(04:32):
is that we're using those same tactics, just adapting them digitally.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Now, the types of digital tools change, the names of
the apps change, the technology behind the apps all change.
But the concepts of psychology and how people buy and
what you need to trigger to make that happen emotionally,
all are kind of the similar concepts that we've you know,
that were you know, talked about fifty years ago. I guess.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So, yeah, well, what kind of initiatives do you have
coming up with group commerce?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So we've got really some neat stuff happening here. So,
you know, we work with companies all over the country.
I attend events all over the world for this and
so one of the things we're really excited about coming
up in May is we're having our first e Commerce
Master Summit here in Baltimore, where we have guest speakers
coming in from our technology partners from all over the
(05:27):
country to come in and do guests speaking and it's
going to be a day and a half of like
action packed seminars and networking. Really good and interesting for
anybody that wants to that may be already selling online
at a high level, or anybody any manufacturer distributor that's
intrigued about, hey, how could we take this and move
(05:48):
digitally you know in terms of how we think about commerce.
And so that's something I'm really excited that it's coming
up on May sixth and seventh. You know, we also
are continuing to evolve our services and you know, are
always looking for opportunities of how to help our clients
get attention in the marketplace.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, how do you guys get new business. Can I
ask you that?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, so it's it's it's through a multitude of different channels.
We're very very active with our own website, right. We
have a pretty mature SEO strategy, search engine optimization strategy.
We leverage paid advertising through things like Google and LinkedIn.
I'm personally very active on LinkedIn. If anybody wants to
(06:33):
connect to me listening to this. And then we often
we implement software on behalf of different software partners where
we resell or refer refer our prospects to those software platforms,
and so they'll bring us leads as well and bring
us into interesting projects that they think we can do
(06:54):
a great job with.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
What is the secret to commerce online? Do you think
like if you could pick one thing, I know, there's
so many factors. That's what your business, you know, kind
of focuses on helping those businesses grow. But I mean,
did you give it throw out a freebe for people?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah? Absolutely? So you want to keep it really simple.
You don't want to create friction with your website, right.
You want your website to be easy to use. You
want the process from the homepage to a category page
to a product detail page. By the time you click
to add something to your cart. You want that to
be easy, to be able to follow through all of
those steps, right, because a typical e commerce site might
(07:35):
only get one or two percent of the people that
visit it actually purchased something. And so if you think
about that, if if only you know one or two
out of every hundred people that went into McDonald's bought
a big Mac, or if they're only one or two
out of every people that went into home depot like
bought a hammer, those businesses they would go out of business. Right,
(07:56):
So you need to be sticky and clean and easy
for people to use, and so like kind of coming
behind that. We really tell people to go above and
beyond with product descriptions and photography. If it doesn't look good,
it doesn't feel good for most consumers, whether that be
direct consumer or whether that be business to business. So
(08:19):
I talk a lot about for manufacturers, it's like you
need technical drawings and all the specifications and information you
can provide. And it drives me crazy at times when
you you know, you find better descriptions on Amazon than
you do on the manufacturers. Right.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
That's so true is that one of the biggest mistakes
they make as a as a absolute.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
It's a huge mistake. It's a huge mistake. Right. People
want to see multiple angles of products. They want to
know the weight, the length and width, the height. They
want to know, you know, depending upon you know what
you know what it is. They might want to know
materials it's made from. Especially these days, people want to
know where it's sourced from. You know, all of those
(09:04):
things are very very helpful because there's different types of
you know, personas that are buying from you. You want
to make sure that you kind of cover all the bases.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Absolutely. Oh man, this is awesome. I really appreciate this
little introduction to your company. Where can listeners find out
more information about yourself and groove Commerce? I mean, go ahead,
listen them, listen them out there.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Absolutely. You can go to groove commerce www dot groove
commerce dot com, g R O O V E C
O M M E R c E dot com, where
you can find me on LinkedIn under Ethan Giffin no
R no R no R in the last name. It's
very common. Ye. They actually accidentally put an R on
(09:45):
my father's tombstone. You can only imagine, you know what
happens when when they misspell your name.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
There so it's Ethan Giffin. Giffin yep, all right, Founder
and CEO of groove Commerce. Thank you so much for
the time and giving us introduction to your business. Please
log on find out more about groove Commerce and thanks
for your time.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Ethan, thank you so much and wonderful to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You've been listening to Maryland Business Spotlight.
This is iHeartRadio's Maryland Business Spotlight. Each week we hear
from one local business owner letting us know where they
are in their business journey and how they got there.
I'm here today with Ethan Giffen, founder and CEO of
groove Commerce. Ethan tell us about groove Commerce.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Groove Commerce we're an eighteen year old e commerce agency
that focuses on helping mid market manufacturers and brands that
want to do commerce online. So that could be helping
them build a direct to consumer sales channel, or that
could be helping them to build business to business buyers
portal where their trading partners can come in and order
(00:38):
their parts and products to be shipped to them. We
integrate those tools into their financial management systems, their ERP,
their warehouses, and then once we build those sites for
our customers, we like to say, put gas in the
car and help them with growth and retention marketing to
(00:59):
grow their revenue using different strategies.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Well that's fantastic, wow, And like, can you give an
example of a company or is that okay to do?
I'm just curious who you've helped.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, you know, an example of one of our clients
is Cutter and Buck, who is a manufacturer of clothing
and a pail out of the Pacific Northwest. They also
have a huge, a huge business line with customized clothing
maybe for athletic teams or for golf courses. So we
help them, We help them to build a direct to
(01:35):
consumer sales channel.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Well that's fantastic. Now, how did you get your start
with the groove commerce in this kind of business?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
So I started Groove about eighteen years ago, so seventeen
years in a handful of days. So we're just about
to become legal, so to speak. And so prior starting Groove,
I worked in Baltimore at a company called a Leigis Group,
a global staff and provider, and help them with their
(02:02):
Internet strategy. And after about eight and a half or
nine years, I decided to embark on my own adventure
and become an entrepreneur. I didn't have any gray hair
then and now I've got plenty, So it's it's been
quite an adventure. But you know, I really enjoyed working
there and learned a ton you know, you know, I
(02:24):
talk about it like it was my my mba. It
was such a fascinating place to uh to work and
to grow professionally and so really kind of set me
up for success when I started my own business.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Well, and what are the some of the things that
you've learned along the way, the biggest changes from when
you start a Groove commerce to where it is now,
whether it be technology or just how the business is run.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, I think I think you know all of it, right,
Like it's all changed. So when I started Groove, the
iPhone didn't exist yet. Oh yeah, right, And if you
just if you think about that as a concept for
somebody that you know, almost everybody's using their their iPhone
or their Android phones to surf the web and to
buy products and to do all the things with it, right,
(03:08):
And so that has been a new aspect of of
of our business. And you know, adapting to mobile and
tablet devices is an ever changing and ever changing piece.
We're also seeing just a huge amount of overall adoption.
So we work with manufacturers and distributors, and so many
(03:29):
of them know how to make their products and make
great fens, you know, make great products, but they don't
know about technology, and they definitely don't know about online
commerce usually, and so these are manufacturers that may have
done faxes for orders handwritten, handwritten you know, invoices or
order sheets, et cetera. And so, uh, you know, by
(03:52):
helping to take them online and get into that next year.
It's it's it's really transformed their businesses by doing it.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
It's such a fascinating thing, especially the kind of business you'reine,
because it must be constantly changing, right, I mean from
month to month, year to year at least.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Right. Well, it's interesting, you know, one of the things
that like it's always changing, but it's not, you know,
and if you kind of take it back to techniques
that old direct response marketers used to use, like postcards
and letters and billboards and all of those types of things,
you know, Like I kind of came up in my
career learning about all of that. And the thing is
(04:32):
is that we're using those same tactics, just adapting them digitally.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Now, the types of digital tools change, the names of
the apps change, the technology behind the apps all change.
But the concepts of psychology and how people buy and
what you need to trigger to make that happen emotionally,
all are kind of the similar concepts that we've you know,
that were you know, talked about fifty years ago. I guess.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So, yeah, well, what kind of initiatives do you have
coming up with group commerce?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So we've got really some neat stuff happening here. So,
you know, we work with companies all over the country.
I attend events all over the world for this and
so one of the things we're really excited about coming
up in May is we're having our first e Commerce
Master Summit here in Baltimore, where we have guest speakers
coming in from our technology partners from all over the
(05:27):
country to come in and do guests speaking and it's
going to be a day and a half of like
action packed seminars and networking. Really good and interesting for
anybody that wants to that may be already selling online
at a high level, or anybody any manufacturer distributor that's
intrigued about, hey, how could we take this and move
(05:48):
digitally you know in terms of how we think about commerce.
And so that's something I'm really excited that it's coming
up on May sixth and seventh. You know, we also
are continuing to evolve our services and you know, are
always looking for opportunities of how to help our clients
get attention in the marketplace.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, how do you guys get new business. Can I
ask you that?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, so it's it's it's through a multitude of different channels.
We're very very active with our own website, right. We
have a pretty mature SEO strategy, search engine optimization strategy.
We leverage paid advertising through things like Google and LinkedIn.
I'm personally very active on LinkedIn. If anybody wants to
(06:33):
connect to me listening to this. And then we often
we implement software on behalf of different software partners where
we resell or refer refer our prospects to those software platforms,
and so they'll bring us leads as well and bring
us into interesting projects that they think we can do
(06:54):
a great job with.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
What is the secret to commerce online? Do you think
like if you could pick one thing, I know, there's
so many factors. That's what your business, you know, kind
of focuses on helping those businesses grow. But I mean,
did you give it throw out a freebe for people?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah? Absolutely? So you want to keep it really simple.
You don't want to create friction with your website, right.
You want your website to be easy to use. You
want the process from the homepage to a category page
to a product detail page. By the time you click
to add something to your cart. You want that to
be easy, to be able to follow through all of
those steps, right, because a typical e commerce site might
(07:35):
only get one or two percent of the people that
visit it actually purchased something. And so if you think
about that, if if only you know one or two
out of every hundred people that went into McDonald's bought
a big Mac, or if they're only one or two
out of every people that went into home depot like
bought a hammer, those businesses they would go out of business. Right,
(07:56):
So you need to be sticky and clean and easy
for people to use, and so like kind of coming
behind that. We really tell people to go above and
beyond with product descriptions and photography. If it doesn't look good,
it doesn't feel good for most consumers, whether that be
direct consumer or whether that be business to business. So
(08:19):
I talk a lot about for manufacturers, it's like you
need technical drawings and all the specifications and information you
can provide. And it drives me crazy at times when
you you know, you find better descriptions on Amazon than
you do on the manufacturers. Right.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
That's so true is that one of the biggest mistakes
they make as a as a absolute.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
It's a huge mistake. It's a huge mistake. Right. People
want to see multiple angles of products. They want to
know the weight, the length and width, the height. They
want to know, you know, depending upon you know what
you know what it is. They might want to know
materials it's made from. Especially these days, people want to
know where it's sourced from. You know, all of those
(09:04):
things are very very helpful because there's different types of
you know, personas that are buying from you. You want
to make sure that you kind of cover all the bases.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Absolutely. Oh man, this is awesome. I really appreciate this
little introduction to your company. Where can listeners find out
more information about yourself and groove Commerce? I mean, go ahead,
listen them, listen them out there.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Absolutely. You can go to groove commerce www dot groove
commerce dot com, g R O O V E C
O M M E R c E dot com, where
you can find me on LinkedIn under Ethan Giffin no
R no R no R in the last name. It's
very common. Ye. They actually accidentally put an R on
(09:45):
my father's tombstone. You can only imagine, you know what
happens when when they misspell your name.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
There so it's Ethan Giffin. Giffin yep, all right, Founder
and CEO of groove Commerce. Thank you so much for
the time and giving us introduction to your business. Please
log on find out more about groove Commerce and thanks
for your time.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Ethan, thank you so much and wonderful to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You've been listening to Maryland Business Spotlight.
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