The Clear Choice, The Clear Leader, The Whole Truth
We readily tell the public and our competitors what we are doing and how we are doing it. You can rest assured that when we make a claim it is true. When we represent that a product is in stock we mean in our warehouse. We guarantee that through Aisle77.com that we have three sizes of mats that are shipped right away –regardless of what our competitor tells you. Don’t take our word for it call the manufacturer. When we say you can have a product FAST we mean that you can expect that your item will ship the SAME business day or within 48 hours depending on where it ships from. While some products, such as many BLT items have a longer lead time we state up front and make no attempt to have you think it will get there faster. We don’t blame our competitors for comparing themselves to us, making questionable statements or claiming to be better then we are because we are an established leader in the industry. The truth be told, we believe the more competitors we have the more people that will know about the neat products we sell and the better business will be for all of us.
JNK Products (now JNK Products, LLC) was started in January 2001. The company was started when Justin and Nicole Krauss saw an opening in the internet that allowed a consumer oriented company to deliver niche products at a fair price. We started in our garage and invested 100% of our profits back into our company. We quickly moved out of the garage and into a small office in the basement of a building on Main Street. We then purchased our first small office and warehouse space which we outgrew in less than a year. Due to our rapid growth we purchased a building three times the size of our first warehouse.
Justin Krauss is a published, sought after home improvement specialist who started his journey in the home improvement industry in his Grandfather’s lumberyard in Long Beach, NY. Justin has since had published research in the home improvement industry as well as designs that were featured in major industry magazines. Justin has been involved in home improvements for nearly two decades and has served in positions ranging from sales clerk to most recently a regional manager for a major manufacturer. What about Nicole? In March of 2006 we had our third child. In the months leading up to his birth she decided to maintain her ownership in the company but that it would be in the best interest of the company and our family for Justin to run it.
JNK Products is emerging as the clear and preferred leader in the online garage flooring, garage storage and niche home improvement products market. How can we make such a bold statement? We sell millions of dollars a year in garage flooring and garage storage products. We are the website that many in the industry consider to be their ‘major competitor’ and we are the business model that many in the industry have used to create there own companies. We’ve recently revised our policy about releasing numbers but I can tell you that in the year 2005 we sold over 1.4 Million dollars worth of a single brand of garage flooring. When you consider that is just one of our many brands it shows a clear dominance in our industry. Our total sales volume is millions of dollars higher than that. To make sure these numbers are accurate we use a third party, independent CPA to verify all numbers and transactions.
Free Shipping Vs. Flat Rate Shipping
It is always amazing to see the well intentioned claims of many business people. I recently read where a business that started on 2004 was claiming to be the first garage flooring company to offer free shipping. We offered free shipping on garage flooring from our very beginning until just this year when fuel costs got out of hand. Now we charge a $10 fee for shipping (for your entire order) and on BLT products we include that cost in our advertised price.
Why the change in shipping policies? It just felt more truthful. It is easy to build the cost of shipping into a $200 item and call it ‘free shipping.’ It is far more difficult to do that on a $9.99 roll of Gorilla Tape. For us, the bottom line is that we guarantee our total delivered price to be the best price you will find.
We have always made it our policy to notify our customer as soon as we processed an order and as soon as that order has shipped. For over a year we have used a system that automatically sends your tracking information to you as soon as a label is generated. If you look at Starship’s website you’ll even see that we are there featured testimonial! In February of 2006 we added an online tracking system. In May of 2006 we overhauled the system (causing temporary outages online but out customers still received email notification). The overhaul was done so that we could instantly take data from our vendors and make it available to you online without having to reenter the data.
One of the things that is the most fun about running an ecommerce business is the feedback you get from your customers. We have customers tell us that they want more products, some ask for more focused information on a group of products and others ask for special services. As you can see, some of these items are mutually exclusive. To better serve our customers we have different sites to meet different needs. We always tell you when a site is a division of JNK Products, LLC
We believe there are honest and not so honest reasons to run multiple sites. Some companies (none that I know of in our industry) use multiple sites because they’ve trashed their name or reputation. Others use multiple sites as a way of getting additional advertising. Still others, such as many major car companies, travel agencies, computer companies, etc use different sites for a different focus. We have done just that. In the brick and mortar or traditional business model you see the same strategies all the time. Consider a major toy store that sells baby stuff opening a store that focuses on baby stuff.
Yes, we love selling multiple lines of different products, but we never do this at the expense of our primary products which are the garage flooring and garage storage products. Consider this: Can a computer company be considered the expert in portable music players? Does this make them less of an expert on computers? We’ve sold millions and millions of dollars in garage flooring and garage storage products. Knowledge comes by experience and by a willingness to learn. Other companies have a lot of knowledge too. As important as your knowledge is what you choose to do with it. We choose to do the following:
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Present our customers with the best options and widest selection and let them make the decision.
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To not carry products known to be inferior.
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To stock products that are practical to stock. We believe that by having product on hand and allowing our sales force to touch feel and play with the products that our sales force is better equipped to help.
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To ALWAYS recommend the solution that is best for the customer not the best solution for our bottom line.
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We commit to say no when a product won’t work. I probably turn away 10% of the sales calls that come to me personally because they would be better off with a brand we don’t carry or there is simply not a known solution to their problem.
When a publicly traded oil company needed thousands of square feet of garage flooring for an unusual application, they came to us. We were able to negotiate special terms with the manufacturer and pass those on to them. They continue to buy product from us on a regular basis. We’ve sold garage flooring to every branch of the military we can think of. My personal favorite, we recently sold thousands of dollars in specialty coatings to a division of NASA We have contractors that buy from us time and time again. We’ve been featured on national TV shows and quoted in national publications.
We recently sent back tens of thousand of dollars in garage floor tiles that were selling like hot cakes because we were not comfortable with their long term performance. The dilemma became how to protect our existing customers –because problem happens and you show your integrity with how you deal with them. We were able to return all of our inventory while receiving written assurance that all of our existing customers would be 100% protected if their floor failed –including in the worst of cases an exchange for a different brand or a full refund for USED product.
We can’t claim that we will never overlook a flaw in a product. We can tell you that in five years we’ve had one problem and we made absolute certain that our customers would be 100% taken care of.
Again, it is our policy not to discuss specific numbers but we are growing and growing fast. It sounds kind of funny but 2005 was our worst growth because we only more than doubled our sales from the previous year.
As we grow we rethink and re-plan our product lines, procedures and policies. In 2006 for example we pioneered the idea of guaranteeing your satisfaction with garage flooring products. We believe that this benefited many people, regardless of if they were our customer or not., because many sites followed our example and constructed a similar policy –and we’re glad they did.
Garage Flooring and Storage Association
In late 2005, early 2006 we began contacting competitors, manufacturers, retailers, franchisers, contractors and others. Our quest to find 10 companies that will be a core group to develop an unbiased organization dedicated to promoting the industry and protecting the customer continues. We’ve registered the trademarks, filed for the independent tax ID and taken other necessary steps. Other than this section we make one mention of this association because it was a legal requirement for some of the papers we filed. Our challenge to the industry is to join us. We know your not silly enough to buy from us because were trying to start an association. We want you to buy from us for all the reasons above. We want to start the association to promote the future of the industry and to protect you as a customer but we are fully aware that this can not happen until we have assembled a diverse group.
Do Internet Dealers Undercut the Market?
Some do and some don’t. Our policy is to operate on what we believe to be a fair margin. While I won’t tell you what that margin is I can tell you that it is the same margin I worked off of when I was in the brick and mortar model of business. I can also tell you that for us the common belief that an internet business does not have the same overhead as a traditional business is simply not true. We have the same building and electrical expenses, more advertising expenses, and most importantly we invest a lot of money in good people to serve our customers. The simple truth is that we guarantee you, our customer, the best price. From time to time another company, for one reason or another, will advertise a price that is below what we think is fair. That being said, we promised you the best price so when that happens we are forced to match it. Two times in five years we have seen it happen where every time we match a price the company we matched drops their price again. We know that in order to serve you we need to make a buck but we also know that we have promised the lowest price. When we see the beginnings of an irresponsible price war we have found it most effective to opt out until the manufacturer can deal with the situation. In the two instances where we have seen this happen we kept our prices up and asked customers to call if they needed us to match a price. In both cases the manufacturer dealt swiftly with the problem because irresponsible price wars are not good for anyone.
I received a call one Friday from a customer asking me if the aisle77.com FAST (trademarked as an acronym for First Available Ship Time) was really any faster then anybody else’s. She let me know that she had been told that it all ships from the same place.
I chuckled and asked her if she felt it was possible everyone could be right? Many of the garage flooring products and other products on our site are in stock in our warehouse and will ship the same day you place you order – sometimes the next if you miss the cutoff time. We mark those products as being in stock. She was asking more specifically about a particular brand of rolled garage flooring. Yes, those all ship to the same place I replied and they all ship the same way. So how can yours be any faster like you claim, she asked? It’s actually simple. We have three mats in the grey color that if you order through Aisle77.com you get to jump to the front of the line! Instead of waiting a weak or two for your mat to ship it is guaranteed to ship within two business days. In many cases if you order a FAST size through Aisle77 you will receive you mat before it would even have shipped if you ordered it somewhere else.
There’s also one additional factor that affects your lead time. If you place an order through us online or over the phone during normal business hours, your order will have been transmitted within about 20 minutes. Since every manufacturer has cut off times it is highly possible that you will receive your order faster through a company that has the staff to process your orders right away.
What about the statements about JNK Products on competitor’s websites?
Its hard to blame a company for wanting to compete against us. Its kind of like politics. If the republicans win an election the democrats say some things. If the democrats win then I’m sure the republicans will speak up. While politicians are often well intentioned I never believe everything they say. If you want to know what people think about us call some of our manufacturers such as Better Life Technology (http://www.bltllc.com/) or Sport Court® (www.sportcourt.com) and ask them. We also have hundreds, maybe thousands of testimonials we would be happy to send you. When you are clearly at the front of the pack there’s only one place for people to aim and that is at you back.
