Today, on Wayne Liew Dot Com Entrepreneur Interviews segment, I am very proud to have Steve Chou talking about his wedding linens business, Bumblebee Linens, online retailing and his experience of being an entrepreneur.
Online retailing has always been a business model that I want to venture into. In fact, I already have a business plan for an online store that will serve my local community and Steve is the person who has been answering the questions that I had about online retailing.
Apart from running his wedding linens business, he also blogs about online retailing and share fun stories that he encountered while running the business at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com. The following will be my interview with Steve and I hope you will enjoy it.
Interview with Steve Chou
Wayne: Steve, first of all, I would like to thank you for joining Wayne Liew Dot Com Entrepreneur Interviews, a place where entrepreneurs share their experience of being an entrepreneur as well as their entrepreneurial insights.
Steve: Thank you for having me.
Wayne: Now Steve, before we dive into the questions I have for you today, do you mind taking the center stage to tell the readers a little bit about your background and the business that you are currently running?
Steve: Sure Wayne. My background is in electrical engineering actually and I design microprocessors during the day. My wife stays home with our child and we both run an online wedding linens business together. I also write articles on my blog at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com
Wayne: That makes you a busy man. What really inspires you to start your own business?
Steve: Way back when my wife and I got together, she told me that she was going to quit her job when we had our first child. Because it’s really expensive to live here in the Silicon Valley, I knew that we would need to find an alternate income to replace my wife’s salary. It’s extremely important to my wife and I that a parent stay home to raise our child. That is the reason why we started our online wedding linens business together.
Wayne: Have to agree with that even though I am not a parent yet. 
Steve: Your whole world changes once you do and you’ll do anything and everything to be together with your family.
Wayne: Let us move a little bit deeper into online retailing. When aspiring entrepreneurs or small business owners look at online retailing or retailing in general, they tend to link it to Amazon or their local Walmart store. It makes running a retail store becomes somewhat intimidating for a starter. In your opinion, is it hard to run an online retail business?
Steve: I think it’s extremely difficult if you decide to take on the big boys head on. But if you find a small niche then you have a very good chance to run a profitable business. There are certain products that aren’t worth selling to the big boys but can be extremely profitable to an individual business owner.
Steve: The main advantage of being small is that you can focus all of your efforts into selling that item. Would you rather buy from a big conglomerate or would you rather shop from someone who specializes in the product that you are looking for? Specialization is the key.
Wayne: What you say is really true and I think the trend of retailing is really moving towards specialization as we can see from stores that are set up just to sell ties or socks. For a person who is eager to start an online retail business, what are the top 3 things that they must do or look out for?
Steve: #1 Make sure that there’s a market for what you are trying to sell. Perform keyword searches on Google and do trial auctions on eBay to see if someone is out there looking for your product.
Steve: #2 Get your product sourcing down. 50% of the success of your business relies on obtaining reliable vendors who can source your product at reasonable prices.
Steve: #3 Avoid selling commodity items where it can be difficult to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Wayne: Those are some really good advice. Can you reveal to the readers about your daily schedule in a brief manner? How’s a day of an online retailer like?
Steve: Actually my wife runs our online store now full time. There was a period however in which we both had full time jobs and ran the business as well. During that period, we had to juggle taking customer calls while working our day jobs in addition to fulfilling orders. These days, my wife spends most of her time on product sourcing, marketing and coming up with new innovative products to sell. We both also share the responsibility of taking customer calls. Things have gotten a lot easier now that we have some help and my wife no longer works.
Wayne: I guess this is how the name of your blog comes about. We will talk a little bit about your blog later. For most small business owners, "recession" seems to be the buzzword lately. Is your business affected by the downturn?
Steve: Actually, our business has not felt this recession at all yet. Perhaps it’s because people are still getting married and our products just aren’t that expensive to be cut out of a wedding budget. In fact, for this first quarter alone, we are seeing close to an 80% increase in sales year over year. I think that our business is still in the growing phase. Perhaps once we have matured, our growth will saturate.
Wayne: Wow… That is really a good result when everybody else seems to be posting a decline. What are some of the marketing tactics or strategies that you have implemented for your wedding linens store?
Steve: My wife and I are strong proponents of doing things yourself when it comes to weddings. For our wedding, we made practically everything from our invitations, programs and our wedding favors. So we’ve been putting up step by step instructions on how to perform various arts and crafts with our products. Customers are attracted to our store via these crafts pages and then decide to purchase our products. The other thing we focus on is customer support and word of mouth. When a customer is satisfied, they tend to tell their friends.
Wayne: I really do think your business places a lot of focus on customer support. I like the customer stories that are posted on your blog.
Steve: 
That section is a bit deceptive since 90% of our customers are really pleasant to deal with. The customer stories on the blog are more like horror stories.
Wayne: Let us talk about about your blog. Steve, I know about you and your business through your blog about online retailing. Can you tell us the idea behind the blog?
Steve: Since we were able to start a successful business and my wife could quit her job, I had many friends come and ask me how we did it. Instead of telling the same story over and over again, I decided to document our experiences. I think that most people are scared of going out on their own and I’m just trying to provide some confidence and inspiration for would-be entrepreneurs through my blog. It really doesn’t take that much to start a business. You just have to force yourself to begin.
Wayne: Is it hard finding the time to blog and at the same time running your business? Blogging is a pain for most business owners because they have trouble brainstorming for content and another reason is that they don’t have enough time.
Steve: It is a struggle. Initially when I first launched the blog, I tried to blog 5 times a week and nearly killed myself. I am much more comfortable now blogging 2-3 times a week. I don’t really ever have problems coming up with content. There’s so much going on everyday that there’s a ton of things to write about. In fact I have over 80 draft article topics just waiting to be written. It does take a lot of time however. I try to make each and every entry worthy of a read which is why you rarely see any short posts on the blog.
Wayne: Yup, I have to say that every post on your blog is a gem. Steve, you chose to blog about business and retailing but not wedding linens. Why is that so?
Steve: Ironically, the blog is actually not meant to promote our small business. My intention is to help others start their own businesses so they can quit their day jobs as well (that is if they don’t like their day jobs). At some point in the future, my wife would like to start a blog specifically covering weddings. As for me, I’m much more passionate about running and starting businesses as opposed to wedding linens in particular.
Wayne: Can’t wait to check out the new wedding blog when it launches. Personally, I think MyWifeQuitHerJob,com is quite successful because you are able to pull together a community of entrepreneurs, especially retailers and online retailers. How do you expect your business to grow in the next 5 years? Do you have any other business ideas in mind that we can see you branching into in near future?
Steve: My wife and I were actually talking about this the other day. In the next few years, we hope to hire a few people to manage the entire operation which would free up a ton of time for the both of us. In the future, we hope to branch out and expand our inventory to cast out a much wider net. As for other ventures, I would like to start writing iPhone apps and going back to my technical roots. I also plan on writing my first e-book as well.
Wayne: There are definitely some big projects coming up. Steve, you have dropped a lot of golden nuggets for entrepreneurs and small business owners throughout this interview. Before we round up this interview, what will be your number one advice for entrepreneurs out there trying to achieve success with their ventures?
Steve: I would say that you should pursue your business idea while working your day job. That way you don’t feel any monetary pressure and you can make sound decisions regarding your business. It takes a bit of extra effort but if you are determined, you can always find the time. The other thing I would say would be to just do it and stop waiting on the sidelines.
Wayne: Good advice. Where can readers find more about you? How can they get in touch with you?
Steve: You can start by reading my About Me page as well as reading my 25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me post. I can always be reached at mywifequitherjob@gmail.com. I try to answer every email.
Wayne: With that, I would like to thank Steve Chou from Bumblebee Linens. Steve, thanks again for joining me for this interview today.
Steve: Thanks Wayne. It was a pleasure.
Afterthoughts on Interview with Steve Chou
Steve is a nice guy. I know this from chatting with him and reading his articles on MyWifeQuitHerJob.com. He really doesn’t mind offering advice and sharing the experience that he acquires from running his own business.
Online retail is a business that is coming closer to reality for me after this interview. Steve reaffirms the advice that most entrepreneurs out there like Michael Dunlop offers, JUST DO IT! If you are going all out to do something, no one will be able to stop you.
What are the things that you have learned from this interview with Steve Chou from Bumblebee Linens? Are you in or thinking about running an online retail business?
Share with me your thoughts by posting a comment below.
Also, if you like the interview above and would like to receive notifications about future interviews as well as other premium content, kindly subscribe to Wayne Liew Dot Com Newsletter by submitting your name and email address using the form below.
