Name of your website?Dawn's Designer Baskets & Gifts, Etc., Inc.
Your name?
Dawn Lambe
Your Location (city, etc)
Palm Beach County
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Dawn's Designer Baskets & Gifts, Etc., is THE Anytime and Special Occasion Gift Basket Company! Custom created Corporate and Personal Baskets (and more). We cater to individuals and companies who desire to send lasting tokens of appreciation, celebration, and honor that lasts longer than flowers.
From themed gift baskets, romantic gift ideas, personalized candy wrappers, wedding favours, cheesecakes, steak & lobster dinners, and beyond, we are Palm Beach County's PREMIER solution to its gifting needs.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
When researching the industry, I realized that many "at home" gift basket companies were nothing more than multi-level marketing drop-ship directories. (some of which are actually listed on your site, by the way) Did you know that it is actually ILLEGAL in the State of Florida to run a food-based business from home?
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
dawnsdesignerbaskets.com It now redirects to my current site. I designed my first site myself, and oy! did it stink! I saved up the money and had my new site designed professionally. I did learn a lot, though, and I have several blogs related to my industry: giftbasketblog.com and sayitwithcoffee.net, which I hope will get more traffic to my site.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Well, I originally chose dawnsdesignerbaskets.com, but when I had my site re-done, my webmaster chose a domain name keyword rich, and now my old domain name redirects to my new one. I believe it's helped.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
Do you mean the site, or the business? I'm unique, in that I run the office from home and do the spa and baby baskets from home, but I do the food based baskets from a climate controlled warehouse. I enjoy this because I'm not chained to a store all day (for instance, I'm in bed right now with 102 fever; I wouldn't be able to stay home if I had a "store"), but it does hurt because sometimes because clients cannot stop by my warehouse (not insured for it), it makes my look less legitimate.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Well, eventually, I want to grow to the point where all I'm doing is designing the original baskets, pricing them out, then leaving the actual construction to someone else. The only thing I want to do eventually is just the marketing, like going to the networking meetings, etc. I would love to have a marketing person out there right now, quite frankly, but don't have the budget for it.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Right now, it's not. I'm busting my butt to get into people's heads that I'm not some "basket lady down the street", that I'm a legitimate company.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Well, I certainly wouldn't pay for print advertising, that's for certain! Biggest waste of my money! I think I would set up more deals to become a distributor for certain products that would be of use to other basket designers in my area.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
If my site got really big, with ACTUAL sales, then yes. I got really slammed over Christmas with people going through my site, ordering a custom basket, and then it turns out that they "wanted to see what I could do for $100" Lesson learned. I changed my order form to reflect that.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Unexpected cost? My air conditioning went out in October. I lost about a grand worth of custom novelty chocolates. Not a good month.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Getting people to understand why they should buy from a LEGITIMATE gift basket company (even if it's not mine) versus buying that $60 Godiva basket from the local wholesale warehouse!
I was trying to get a corporate client back in November. He says to me, "Why should I pay $125 for you to put together a chocolate lover's basket when I can get one bigger for $80 at BJ's?"
Well, think of this: you give that mass-produced, shrink wrapped P.O.S. to your client. He takes it home to his wife (who by the way also probably shops at BJ's), and she recognizes it. What kind of impression does that leave?
He declined to use our services. But his secretary called in a tissy four days before christmas. He was in a jam because he wanted a really nice gift to give to an important client. Of course, that close to the holiday, the $125 basket was now $250....and he paid it. He even sent me a thank you email.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
This, right here. Free (and sometimes paid) links from other directories. Preferably, without a reciprocal link. I cannot speak for anyone else, but in my industry, pay-per-click is also a big waste of money.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I already spend countless hours doing research trying to find unique items to place in my baskets, but now I'm spending just as much time either maintaining my site (I'm hand's on; don't like to outsource), or by finding places to link to.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
well, i've been described as a "force of nature", so failure is not an option for me. If I don't enjoy big gains, I'll get a "9-5", but will continue to have this business. It is only a matter of time before I'm no longer South Florida's Best Kept Secret and then this conversation will be entirely different...
What other endeavors are you working on?
Well, I have a blog on my site, but it doesn't have an RSS feed, so I started my own blog, giftbasketblog.com, which links to my GB business.
I have SayItwithCoffee.net, which is a blog site related to a private label personalized coffee product I provide.
DiaperCakesbyDawn.com will take you to the part of my site which has awesome baby gifts.
FloridaSweetWraps.com will take you to my personalized candy wrapper site.
Any more questions?
What is your website address?
Dawn's Designer Baskets & Gifts, Etc., Inc.