Paul McElroy, founder of e-commerce retailer ÉireinMyBlood.com, was born in Ireland but now lives in Spain. Which makes selling to his target audience, U.S. consumers, complicated.
To help make operating its business easier, the Irish-themed goods retailer decided to use GearLaunch Inc. for all of its manufacturing, shipping and customer service, McElroy says.
GearLaunch has U.S.-based facilities that print and produce Éire in My Blood’s products and can then ship them to the customers for arrival within two days, he says. Éire in My Blood sells about seven types of products, such as T-shirts, luggage covers and jewelry, all of which GearLaunch produces. Once a shopper hits “buy,” the order is immediately sent to GearLaunch to handle. GearLaunch takes a cut of each sale depending on each product. For example, GearLaunch may charge $8 to produce and ship a T-shirt, and Éire in My Blood will sell it to consumers for $21.95.
Éire in My Blood is a small operation with just two employees and generates less than $150,000 in sales annually, McElroy says. Its size means it makes sense for the retailer to outsource its production, warehousing and shipping, so it can focus on marketing and driving traffic to its site, McElroy says.
Facebook ads are the primary way the retailer advertises, and Éire in My Blood targets consumers who are in American-Irish Facebook groups. It also use its 7,000 email subscribers to market to shoppers, he says.
Éire in My Blood decided to target Irish U.S.-based shoppers because they are more comfortable shopping online than other Irish expatriates, McElroy says. “The U.S. market is more mature in terms of online shopping in general compared to Europe,” he says.
Éire in My Blood uses e-commerce platform provider Shopify Inc. for its website. The retailer launched in December 2016 and began using GearLaunch in February 2018. Éire in My Blood first launched with commerce platform Teespring, which also offers similar supply chain services as GearLaunch; however, it did not integrate with Shopify, which is why the retailer switched. The move to GearLaunch also provided Éire in My Blood with a better margin on its products, McElroy says, without revealing specifics. The Shopify GearLaunch integration is currently in a beta mode.
McElroy decided to launch its own website instead of selling on Amazon.com Inc. (No. 3 in the Internet Retailer 2018 Online Marketplaces database) or eBay Inc. (No. 4) so it could “build up its own asset” and to own the shopper experience, he says.
St. Patrick’s Day is Éire in My Blood’s largest shopping holiday, as it generated nearly 40% of its sales in the weeks leading up the March holiday, he says.
GearLaunch has 2,500 retail clients that in total generated $115 million in sales in 2017.
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