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Stinky Ink www.stinkyink.com Location: Shropshire. Most people who are swindled out of £32,000 and have had their stock worth £50,000 stolen in a raid might decide to give up and go back to PAYE employment. But John Sollars is made of sterner stuff. His may be one of the unluckiest online startups ever, but he decided to persevere and quickly learned how to protect his web business from scamsters. Now with a turnover of £3m, and 50% growth projected, it would seem he made a good choice.
In 2002 John gave up a well paid salary as a sales director and put all his savings and energy into Stinkyink.com, a web site powered by Actinic, selling every known make and model of printer cartridge. Within weeks of launching he became the target of a ring of fraudsters based not in Nigeria or Russia, but all over the UK, and the police could do nothing to catch them or get his stock back. However, learning from the experience, he did spot another £12.5k scam that his bank missed.
On the verge of bankruptcy John fought back, using email marketing and search optimisation to generate traffic and within two years was in profit. This was also helped by the site, designed by John’s teenage son, being made incredibly easy for people to find what they need, quickly. The result is a visitor to sales conversion of an impressive 8% and c.250 orders a day.
In this case study, John gives tips on spotting fraud and setting up online. (Full story is 1180 words)
