By Kerry B. Ferguson
WisBusiness.com
A new business flies into town, but FlyingCart.com is still under the radar
MADISON — FlyingCart.com is an online business that provides a three-step guide to setting up your own online business. It’s easy, straightforward and efficient – and the company is based in Wisconsin. So, why have you never heard of it? The founders are wondering that, too.
“I started this company because I like building new products and constantly reinventing (them). We have a cookie-cutter store creator wizard that gets you up and running in under two minutes,” said founder Rishi Shah, who was an innovation consultant at Accenture Technology Labs before creating Flying Cart.
Launched in 2006 with friends and fellow UW-Madison alumni, Margo Baxter and Brian Beermann, Shah has catapulted Flying Cart onto the online small business scene, battling for customers against web-giants like EbayStores and Yahoo!SmallBusiness. With a number of steady clients, the company is holding its own in a competitive market.
“We have more than 1,000 clients and are ready for the next 1,000,” Shah said.
Shah has tried to separate Flying Cart from traditional chain store websites by offering its clients customizable options, easy marketing tools and a way to network with other stores. Since the main goal is pushing revenue for Flying Cart’s member-businesses, the basic package doesn’t require a domain name purchase (though you can if you prefer). There are minimal monthly fees, no setup charges and no hosting costs. The company motto is “quick, easy and accessible to people with no technical expertise.”
However, it may not be “so easy your goldfish could do it,” as the website boasts. Customers need to be able to help Flying Cart customize the personal needs of their businesses, which FlyingCart will do free of charge.
“We take one customer on at a time. We enjoy talking to our customers and seeing what they need, then building it, and then improving it,” Shah said. “You can customize your logo, all images, colors, and descriptions. We have a lot of areas throughout the store where you can enter in free form HTML which can completely alter the look and feel of your store greatly.”
The two main goals of Flying Cart are to help small businesses quickly set up an online store, and to sell more of their products as quickly and easily as possible. In return, Flying Cart retains their name in the domain, like in the address for Flying Cart client Sassy Couture at www.sassycouture.flyingcart.com. It’s their proverbial calling card on the web.
While this small business holds onto more than 1,000 clients at one time, they still remain just that – a small business. Shah runs the company wirelessly from his laptop in cafés around Madison, along with two other partners who help oversee the company’s web services and assist customers. That is, if they need it.
Flying Cart has just created an innovative new idea by embracing the utility of personal and social networking sites. All of the clients can link off each other and create a large community of Flying Cart businesses that helps to increase visibility and sales.
“We are about to deploy a new feature in Flying Cart that will allow our stores to network with each other,” Shah said. “Think MySpace meets eCommerce.”
Visibility is king in the online world. Without external advertising such as print ads or billboards, small businesses such as Flying Cart rely mainly on links from search engine giants, Google and Yahoo!. This works out well for all parties involved since Flying Cart has integrated Google searches into its clients’ business plan and reaps the benefit from having its company name in their domains. For this business, Google, other search engines and customer referrals are all the visibility they need to be successful.
Flying Cart has surprisingly few Wisconsin companies under its flag. But being Internet-based means a nationwide, even global, presence. Since everything is done online, location is obsolete. But Shah said Flying Cart has no intention to move the company elsewhere.
Flying Cart is successful as a business and even though the company name is not yet synonymous with small business start-ups or even Madison, none of that really matters to Shah. In only a year the company has catapulted from an idea into a business, with only a few minor growing pains.
“At first it was tough to figure out what the perfect shopping cart solution would be,” Shah said. “But now that we have more customers, it’s getting easier. They simply tell us what they need.”
Ferguson is a student in the UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communication.
