Cliptomania Case
Global Info. Res. Man.
Case II-5 Cliptomania
Company/Background: In late 1999, the Cliptomania web store started operating out of one small room in the home of the Santos family in New Jersey. Candy Santos, a director for a large nonprofit organization that helped the homeless, is the president of the web store. Her husband Jim, who has a long career of insurance sales, is the vice president. Jim came up with the idea of clip-on earrings with the thought of his wife having keloids. He decided to start a web store for clip-on earrings, but still had to manage his insurance sales job, so Candy stepped in to be president. Neither of the entrepreneurs had any expertise in web site design, so they had the option to hire employees to create the site versus Yahoo! hosting the web store. Being that they just started this business, they went with the cheapest options, which were the Yahoo! Templates. They also found out Yahoo! had the best security among most vendors that support web stores, which finalized Jims decision to use them as a vendor. These templates were used to set up the home page and pages that display descriptions of the items offered. At first, Jim and Candy got any stock they could get because they were desperate, and didn’t know much about fashion. Jim went through the fine jewelry district in Manhattan and came up empty with ideas, realizing he needed to be looking in the fashion jewelry district. Jim and Candy found a wholesaler in Long Island, NY who was excited about what they were doing, and invited them to the International Fashion Jewelry Accessories and Gifts national show. By going the this show, they were able to connect with the representatives of the companies that wouldn’t talk to them before, providing them with stock they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
Issues: As Cliptomania’s consumer base increases on their server, the higher chances of