About CoolerNotes

Hey gang.  Let me introduce CoolerNotes, a blog that chronicles my experiences as the owner of an online cooler company.  It’s a place other online business people can read about my efforts to build the business and hopefully pick up some useful tips and tactics.   But it’s also a place my customers can come to check out product reviews and tips for getting the most out of their cooler.  So…it’s sort of like eating dinner in a restaurant’s kitchen (but cleaner).

Now I guess I should introduce myself and tell how I got here…

My name is James Collie.  When I’m not working, I’m outside – fishing, hiking, etc.  A few years  ago, however, I became  frustrated that I could never find a really good soft cooler that could hold real ice without leaking.  So I made one.  I developed a better (much better) soft cooler called the IceMule.  After working extremely hard to get the  product off the ground my regular life took over and I had to put the cooler business on ice (ouch. sorry.)

For years my wife encouraged me to get it going again.  And lots of my old customers started bugging me to begin production again.  Along the  way, the Internet matured.  In the late ‘90s it was a lot more difficult to successfully build and scale a business – but now, with so many web-based opportunities to connect with customers, market, manage  payments and secure fulfillment, I thought “Why the heck not?”.

So, in the fall of 2008, I contacted my old manufacturer, built prototypes of the new and improved IceMule Cooler, and placed an initial order for product.  I also contracted with a website development company, built www.icemulecooler.com, found a shipper and set up an adwords account.  In January 2009 we launched.  I figured that  by January 2010, I’d be selling a bazillion coolers a week.

Nope.

Turns out there is a lot more to this whole online business thing than I thought.

The interesting thing is that I’m exactly the guy you would expect to know how to market a product online.  By day, I am a marketing executive.  When I invented the IceMule, I was a strategic planner for a bank and eventually became a management consultant for a company that specialized in the intersection between business strategy and technology.   A bit later I took a position leading marketing for a major division for one of the largest banks in the U.S.

Which explains why it was hard to run a small cooler business on the side.  But what it doesn’t explain is this – how can a guy who has experience in business strategy, technology and marketing not know how to make a business immediately explode online?

The answer is really pretty simple.  The Internet doesn’t play by the rules.  Most major companies (including the ones I have worked for) have no clue how to leverage Web 2.0 (or 3.0, which I think will hit us before we recognize it).  Mention “social media” to most corporate marketers and they’ll get a panicked look in their faces and run ask their corporate lawyer if they can “do that”.

Which is just so, so, so cool.  That means that someone with the right idea, the patience, the smarts and a subversive streak can look Goliath square in the eye and knock his head off.

You know, most product companies start out in retail and migrate to the web.  We’re doing it backwards – I want us to build a great community of customers – advocates – online so that by the time we get to retail I can guarantee sales to whatever stores carry us.  But that means I have a lot (a LOT) to learn.

So – as I learn my way, I’ll write about it here, on CoolerNotes.  This is the blog home for the IceMule – the product and the business.  I’m going to make it a home for both my customers (which means if I find a killer new spot for kayak fishing I’m writing about it) and the other rouge business people out there who want to ditch the rules (which means that as I discover a great new plug-in that helps me ID and reach potential customers, I’ll write about it).  Maybe we’ll all learn something.

Welcome to the ride and, as always,

Stay Cool,

James