Anthony Bucci: Opportunity Clicks

Three Attributes for Successful Entrepreneurs

2009-03-30T22:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight I guest spoke at BlobLive in Philly and told the start-up story of RevZilla. It was a blast, and I was flattered to have been asked to be there as an "inspirational success story" speaking first to kick off the night. It felt good. I always enjoy interacting with an audience, especially when I get to talk about anything I am passionate about. Its like a throwback to 2006, leading a pitch to c-level exec's. Catnip for an ex Biz-Dev guy.

At the end of the event I got put on the spot and asked "What are the 3 attributes needed to be a successful entrepreneur?". Not the easiest question on the fly, but there are many "right" answers.

I shot from the hip and answered "Optimistic, Relentless & Ambitious". It's a right answer, but walking out after the event I couldn't help wondering if it was the best answer.

Mulling it further, I wish I had a do-over. I'd answer slightly differently next time.

I will stick with Optimistic. You have to be a dreamer to roll the big dice. Realists and pessimists have an easier time sticking to the norm - the big dice are scary - maxed credit cards, burnt savings and ramen noodles suck. Optimists are the ones naive enough to think they can will their master plans to fruition.

I will also stick with Relentless, although to me the word carries a bit of a negative connotation. It feels like ruthless. While sometimes good business does call for bit of ruthlessness, I hope that for every one time that being ruthless is the right move, there are 20 other times where prudence provides me a more altruistic course of action. Unyielding may make me feel a bit better as it encompasses less of an iron fist and more of a sense of diligence toward the endless funnel of tasks.

Ambitious has to go. Ambition is an afterthought affecting every decision an entrepreneur makes and it rarely a learned trait. You can be more optimistic and relentless in your pursuit and actively work on those traits. You can not be an entrepreneur without being inherently ambitious.

The replacement for ambitious is a toss up between creative and resourceful which to me are closer than one would probably expect. Both of those words relate to an entrepreneurs approach to problem solving using the tools at hand. Many times unusual circumstances in uncharted waters can be very difficult to solve with a shoe-string budget. At times like those I ask myself "What would MacGuyver do?" - He would be creative and resourceful, and usually pull it off. Be MacGuyver. He always wins. And aside from hopefully finding a solution, you usually end up with a kick-ass story to tell later as an added bonus.

To sum up, if I got a do-over, the magic three are Optimistic, Relentless & Cre-sourceful MacGuyver-style with no firearms.

Anthony

Top 10 Sandwiches in Philadelphia

2009-03-24T22:27:00.000-07:00

Its 1:28am on Tuesday. I just got back from the gym and am raiding my child's uncrustables due to lack of an adequate sandwich in the house and no desire to fire up the grill. It just struck me that, come this June, I will have been in Philly for a full ten years. Its also struck me that during my tenure in this town I have experienced a lot of Philly; some good, some bad, all memorable. Some of my favorite and easily replicable experiences are the hometown eats. Philly is a good food town - its been a decade of lunchtime decadence, if you will.

I don't know why, but I have been thinking about sandwiches lately. A ton. Here is my top ten-ish list of of unforgettable sandwiches in good old Philthadelphia.

Boneless Rib Sandwich at The Rib Stand. Reading Terminal Market.
Roast Beef Italian with Broccoli Rabe or Italian Spinach and Sharp Prov at Shank's and Evelyn's. 10th & Christian
Diablo (Buffalo chicken, Green Pepper, Jalapeno Jack Cheese, Avocado, Chipotle Mayo on Sourdough) at the Foodery. 2nd and Poplar St
Cheesesteak (Eaten Sober), American Cheese with Fried Onions at Jim's Steaks. 4th and South.
Roast Pork Italian (Roast Pork, Italian Spinach, Sharp Prov, Homemade Bread) at Tony Lukes. Oregon & Swanson.
Cheese Steak (Eaten Hammered) Wiz, Fried Onions, Hot Sauce, Ketchup. Pat's Steaks. 10th and Wharton
Old Italian Hoagie (Proscuitto, Capacola, Sopresatta, LTO, O&V, Chopped Pepper Shooters on Sarcone's Bread) at Primo's Hoagies. 11th and Sansom.
Buffalo Chicken Sandwich at Race St Cafe. 2nd and Race.
Italian Brisket Sandwich (Brisket, Spicey Spinach Sharp Prov) at Dinic's. Reading Terminal Market.
Roast Beef w/ Horseradish at Nicks Roast Beef. 21st and Jackson.
Wagyu BBQ Brisket at El Camino Real. Liberties Walk & 2nd.

Did I miss any? When I have a massive heart attack next year - at 29 - you will know why. 10 years of eating my top 11 for lunch.

Anthony

(ps I have no idea, besides being very hungry at the moment, what compelled me to write this at 2am.)

(pps - I just reread the list 5 minutes after posting. Half the sandwiches are exactly the same except for swapping the meat type. Am I that stereotypically Italian? I may be physically unable to not eat anything that is paired with Italian greens and sharp provolone cheese. Pathetic)

Honorary Kentucky Colonel... my wish... GRANTED!

2009-03-20T16:20:00.001-07:00

Today after watching the origin of KFC on the History Channel (I know I am a dork), I learned that Colonel Harland Sanders never actually held a military rank. Being bestowed the honorary title of "Kentucky Colonel" is the equivalent of being Knighted in England.... only in Kentucky. Look it up.

There have been hundreds of "Kentucky Colonels" over the last 100 years or so. Notably Dave Thomas, Fred Astair, Clark Gable and the list goes on to include one Colonel Sanders. The kicker for me was that Harland Sanders, founder of KFC, adopted the use of Colonel full-time for no other reason than it "sounded dignified". You self-important bastard. You're ridiculous and I love you.

20 minutes later I added "Become a Kentucky Colonel" to my bucket list and tweeted it. 3 hours later, thanks to friends with Photoshop - my dream has hath come true.

I may not have the official seal (yet), but I now know what I would look like on the side of a bucket of chicken.

Thanks Todd Shafer. I am glad you were bored. You made my day.

For the record my wife thinks this whole thing is "really juvenile and stupid"... which makes me find it even more amusing.

Anthony

Tweet Tweet! 7 reasons to love Twitter..... or at least give it a shot

2009-01-25T20:37:00.000-08:00

I have been blogging for over 5 years and in the last year life got in the way of it. It's not a bad thing, but it bummed me out a bit to slow down - even though a good chunk of my content (mostly from college) will undoubtedly ensure that I will never hold any public office.;-)

In the absence of time to write anything longer than a snippet, it's not that shocking that I have gravitated to Twitter allow me to keep a window open... realistically it's a porthole.. but I will get to that in a second.

Lately friends, family and colleagues have noticed my ubiquitous tweets (which now get auto-pushed to facebook) and have asked me about them. My usual quip has been "It's away messages for adults" and then I send them Tony Hsieh's blog post Twitter Beginner's Guide- but I have realized that there is a lot more to Twitter than just the obvious social elements. A lot can be gained by embracing the cult of Twitterati.

Here are the top 7 reasons why I love Twitter in no particular order (kinda-sorta)

1) Brevity - A blog post takes time. A good blog post takes a lot of time... and if you are as long winded as I am - blog posts can end up as lengthy time consuming diatribes. Save the good blog posts for your most profound sentiments or for when you are really bored. IMO Everything else should be wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am. Twitter let's you post bite sized nuggets by limiting your urge to write to 140 characters and forcing you back to whatever else you were doing before you distracted yourself. Its concise writing by design- and laconic posts are not only forgiven, but encouraged. The opposite of what, you the reader, is currently reading.

2) A New Protocol - Twitter is a quickly emerging protocol that I would still consider to be in its infancy - or at least adolescence. That means its still the wild west and for the time being. Everyone and your mother is not on using it - which is great. While its always a blast to be one of the early adopters, the big benefit to being on Twitter right now is that the commercial signal-to-noise ratio is still relatively low. Currently Twitter is a lot of people, and a subset of companies, interacting in a 80% meaningful way. Twitter has not figured out to monetize itself, so its been that much harder for the spammers to monetize the platform. More and more companies are signing up, but aside from amassing cult followings and offering some special vip deals (i.e @zappos, @woot, @slickdeals, @revzilla ;-p) you don't have to interface with any marketing or advertising unless you want to. Its nice now, but we will see how long the purity lasts. Most predict (and I agree) it will only get worse once it's adopted by the mainstream.

3) Offer more of yourself - One of my favorite things to do is be a smartass. Interpret that very honest statement however you like, but sometimes it can be very conflicting depending what medium I am working in. If I want to leave a comment or an brief message somewhere online, 98% of the time I am laughing writing it while hoping eventually someone will be laughing reading it. Since my blog is the first line of defense and may as well be stapled to my resume, sometimes the posts end up a bit stiffer than I would like for professionalism's sake. It can be hard to inject my personality and a good laugh into landing page optimization and page title keyword SEO strategy without undermining a good point. For colleagues, potential employers, industry connections and everyone else on one's periphery, Twitter allows for a nice mix of insight, humor and smartassedness all broken into individual thoughts. A broader on-the-fly showcase of one's personality, interests and thought processes which, for most people, spills past their professional online persona. I can comment on eCommerce trends, rip a low budget TV commercial (Aamco :-/) and let people know that I think "Voltron is rad" all in a five minute span in very disparate tweets. Everyone should enjoy being less boring more of the time. Sometimes its just as engaging to make an industry contact laugh as it is to impress them with your knowledge multi-channel marketing strategies. (and for the record, I doubled back to my previous blog posts and realized that there is somewhat of a smartass element to all of my blog posts, just not as much as my Tweets ;-p)

4) Exposure - The exposure factor ties right in with the "offering more of yourself" factor. Twitter is a great soapbox for whatever, whenever. Most people, including myself, start with a network of friends but, depending on what you share, your base network can grow pretty quickly. For a talented blogger, marketer, designer or entrepreneur for instance, Twitter is a great platform to be heard and get more acute or broad exposure to build a reputation, platform and eventually open doors. Don't underestimate hashtags, Twitter API's and the internal search with RSS, your Tweets can have a greater reach than you think. Dane Cook and Tila Tequila had MySpace, people with real things to say can (for the time being) have Twitter.

5) It's RSS afflicted with ADHD (sans Ritalin) - RSS is great for precisely aggregating all of the channels of refined information that we choose to read daily, weekly or if you are like I am, when I can get some time. Now think about all of those blog posts & news blurbs and anything they touch peripherally. Set their distribution to continually and instantaneously stream, fragment the sources and interweave any other potentially useful sources into the information itself. Its RSS with its amp turned to 11. Aside from your friends, who typically offer a wide array of varied information, many special interests and media outlets are continually Tweeting random news throughout the day. In my experience a good chunk the info is comprised of factoids, maxims, great quotes and anecdotal evidence. Very interesting tid-bits which unfortunately, sometimes don't have the oomph or the depth to become full articles or blog posts. A lot of times these nuggets are my favorites above all else. See @bimmerpost, @dailyhistory, @venturehacks, @ twittermethis, @monetate & @technorati.

6) Unrestricted Access - These days, just because you have someone's email address doesn't give you the right to email them. Unfortunately, in the age of relentless spam, sometimes nothing is more of a turn off than an uninvited email - regardless of its intent. Enter Twitter. At this point Twitter doesn't suck yet. Follow your heroes, your idols, your favorite band and the business people you aspire to be like. Shoot them a direct message, or if you want to be slick @reply something witty at them based off of a Tweet they post. Your @reply shows up right on their page and depending on the enormity of their fan-base you may get an @reply and a follow back. Aside from the Philly region tech superstars (who shall be named later) which I follow, there is a great advertising / branding blogger out of Chicago who I've been reading for at least 4 years now. He's got the sharp tongue of a "northeasty" but the insight of a guy who I wished I had more chances / conferences to hear speak in person. I have been following him on Twitter for a while and at some point a few months back I just fired a funny @reply at a comment he made. To my surprise he fired right back and now I have ended up with a light open dialogue that has persisted months later. Its a dialogue that for the time being is just that, a basic surface level rapport - but its access. Access I would never have gotten from an email through his blog. Those walls are built too high to keep the other 98% which are mostly spammer idiots, out. Maybe I catch a beer with the guy next time I'm in Chi-town, or maybe the conversation stays status quo. The point is that he's the director of a major company with a hell of a lot of experience and a hell of a lot to say - and at this point if I really wanted to pick his brain, I could probably reach out and I'm 80% I would get a reply. I don't care if you're writing an email, a handwritten letter or using a carrier pigeon - I think its safe to say that the odds for connectivity in the more established mediums are dramatically less. And no, before you ask, it wasn't Levar Burton (@levarburton).

7) Visibility - If I was a kid and wanted to grow up and hit like Reggie Jackson, its pretty safe to say that at some point in my baseball career I, no doubt, would have attempted to mimic that classic Mr. October swing. All "ifs" aside, I know this to be true, because at eight, I did just that. Fast forward 20 years. At this stage of the game, I am now running my own company. So naturally the "hitters" that I want to mimic today are the smart entrepreneurs which I have watched build and enjoy the fruits of their highly successful companies for a decade. I try to mimic their "swings" by researching all of the factors that made their previous companies successful, what mechanisms contributed to those factors and the thought processes which allowed for the creation and positioning of those mechanisms. As long the entrepreneur in question was not a hermit, I can usually go as far back as I want and read the droves of information which has been published about them and their companies after their typical mid-nine-figure exits. That's great backstory, but what is more exciting to me is what those key people have their sites set on now. Imagine if fairly regularly you could have a casual conversation with any of these superstars and they could tell you what they were excited about. Could be pretty enlightening, right? Twitter enables this visibility and sometimes I am still shocked and amazed by the degree folks will share. I follow entrepreneurs, VC's and marketers whos opinions and decision making skills I respect. I read everything that they mention even jokingly. How's that for continuing-ed? There is a wealth of some of the most talented biz people, who you would be lucky to see speak for 20 minutes, that Tweet regularly with useful links to all of the things that are on their radar. What else do I really have to say besides Thanks for the continuing ed' @joshk, @sbarsh, @chrisfralic, @marobella, @dbrussin, @zappos, @richardbranson, @kevinrose & @the_real_shaq (so what? if my company folds, I am learning to be a journeyman rapper from Shaq ;-P)

So there you have it, Twitter as it relates to me, the individual. I threw brevity out the window and in three and some odd hours I have weighed in on the extended "why" behind the question I have gotten most often as of late. In reality though I could have just summed this whole post up in a 140 character Tweet on Twitter....

"Twitter is really new, cool, fun & useful! I like it. Zoinks!"

For the record Twitter's usefulness to my business(@revzilla) is a whole other post.

Anthony Bucci

@anthonybucci on Twitter

2009 New Years Resolutions

2009-01-11T22:09:00.000-08:00

I am usually not a fan of preconceived new years resolutions / goals, but I was thinking that making a list would be more fun to look back at in 5 years than it would be useful now - so why the hell not? So in no particular order:

1. Have 1 phone that lasts the full year without getting destroyed or thrown.
2. Care more about parking tickets. ie try to avoid getting them.
3. Be more detail / roi oriented in the office.
4. Make it to 2010 without losing a fight with another credit card terminal.
5. Be more patient with everyone.
6. Get a piece of my once strong tolerance back.
7. Build a halfpipe in my warehouse and ride it.
8. Strive to continue to grow RevZilla smartly and organically
9. Be more humble
10. Start buying and wearing funny t-shirts again.
11. Start my own lifestyle clothing brand.
12. Practice what I preach 100% of the time
13. Play more guitar and start learning piano
14. Surround myself with more people who I aspire to be like
15. Go from journeyman to ninja of Analytics, SEO and SEM
16. Hang out with Tommy Lee, Axl Rose and Mr. T & See a good concert.
17. Retire the Trash Truck.
18. Blog more about biz.
19. Start shooting skeet / trap again with my Dad.
20. Read a great book a month if not more often.
21. Learn 3 more staple dishes that don't involve a grill or beef.
22. Snowboard with my wife at least once.
22. Reduce my red meat intake.
24. Spend more time with Family.
25. Stop and relax more often.
26. Be less competitive outside of the office.
27. A/B test when available rather than making a gut decision.
28. Meet more east coast tech rockstar vc's who shall remain nameless for the time being. Its a short list.
29. Become a better listener.
30. Take more pictures.
31. Go on more fun "dates" with my wife.
32. Wear more gold chains and velour track suits around South Philly. (submitted by jody ferry)

Also if you think I need to add any to my list, as jody did, please leave them in the comments.

Booch

First plane flight....

2008-12-26T21:14:00.001-08:00

Isabella enjoying her first plane ride from Philly to Sarasota...

Couldn't resist.

A

Happy Holidays from Me and Mine to You and Yours!

2008-12-25T12:03:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone has a happy and healthy holiday season spent with loved ones and the people who matter most.

Obviously Isa is enjoying her first Christmas

Love,

Isabella, Tara and Anthony

7 Month Checkup

2008-12-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

I am just too damn proud a Dad to not post this picture.

17 Lbs, 26.5 Inches and all smiles.

The Journey Continues.....

Anthony

Chinese Democracy: Solid Album, Stupid Title.

2008-11-23T15:17:00.000-08:00

Picked up Chinese Democracy today. I heard 9 of the 14 tracks a few months back when they leaked online. The final versions of the songs sounded great - much better than the leaks.

Its a solid solo album for Axl. My only complaint is that some of the lyrics are a bit cliche - even for rock lyrics. A few of the songs are a little bit over-produced as well. The songs featuring Axl's piano work have always been and are still my favorite. This holds true on the new album.

When you dress like the guy for more than one halloween, you don't really have the option not to buy his first new album in 14 years, regardless of how mired in controversy it is.

Axl and Asian Slash in Avalon circa 2005.

Let's Go!

2008-11-21T07:13:00.001-08:00

People keep asking me - "What happened to the Blog?"

She happened to the blog. RevZilla.com happened to the blog. Life has managed to get in the way of the blog, sleep, working out, fist-pumping, bowling etc. This is not a bad thing though...

Hoping that this post is the spark that brings me back. A lot of things coming up to write about, but priortities have really kept me taking the left turn at twitter when I feel a blog post coming on. It's just so much easier. I know, I know its a cop-out - but a 140 character limit ensures I get back to work much quicker.

The juices are flowing, I just need to get the posts locked down. It will happen.

For the record Whitesnake was playing in the background at my new distribution center for this pic. I just dont randomly throw the horns that often anymore. Isa did love it though.

More to come....

Lose the Chip on your shoulder, John.

2008-09-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

When it comes to matters of future presidential policies, I am a strong proponent of some as well as firmly against others, stemming from both camps.

Also, I don't like Roger Ebert. He's annoying and smug.

As ridiculous as it is, Ebert's commentary is spot on. McCain definitely came off as an a-hole for all 90 mins Friday night. Either he's a jerk, or has terrible people skills / manners. Either way it didn't get him closer to my vote.

Read the commentary.

It's sad that this was the first thing significant enough to get me writing again since the birth of my daughter. It just struck a big chord.

-A

The Proudest Moment of My Life.

2008-06-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Isa' now has her own blog. IsabellaMarieBucci.blogspot.com

I think have had my hand in a lot of cookie jar's in my 27 years. I have closed a lot of deals, climbed a lot of proverbial mountains and taken the podium enough times to be pretty happy with my stat's at this point. I hate to sound smug, but if you asked me I would say that a lot of hard work has paid off well over the years.

Well none of it even comes close to the moment you watch your child enter the world and share it with the woman you love. I think all things leading up to that point were just minor blips on the radar. This is where the real adventure begins.

Perspective is a funny thing sometimes.

At 8:05pm yesterday Tara and I gave birth to our first daughter Isabella Marie. Shes so beautiful & perfect and its hard to even describe the experience with words. The best I can do at this point is just to say I am completely blown away.

Staying true to form, we had a wild time over the 12 hours of labor. Yes a wild time definitely includes billy bob teeth, pirate hats and one liners that seemed to never end.

See All 70 pics in Chronological order with commentary.

Mom, Baby and I are resting comfortably at UPENN until Monday night. We look forward to seeing everyone soon.

Booch

its on like donkey kong..... Baby time

2008-05-31T15:18:00.000-07:00

been here since 8am- its now 6:22, were delirious, but the drugs have kicked in and were having fun as usual. More to come

Kobe!

Oh Hell No! - Inspired Customer Feedback

2008-05-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

Yeah I was smiling on the inside after this one.....

===================================

From:
Date: Thu, May 15, 2008 at 5:45 PM
Subject: RevZilla Customer Service Inquiry - Other
To: xxxx@revzilla.com

A customer service inquiry has been submitted:

Name
chris fxxxxx
Email
gxxxxx@myway.com
Phone
5105xxxxxx

Message

Oh hell no! I ordered yesterday after 2pm pacific time and received my product @11am this morning. now thats what i call better than next day delivery. I was expecting the package to be something i ordered months ago from another company. I could hardly have got it faster if i had shopped for it locally (i did by the way and they dont carry the product yet, its too new I guess). any way thanks a lot. I read a review from one of your customers saying they were delighted to have received their product next day but i would have never believed i would have received mine next day.

====================================

Booyah. Son.

Yelp is a completely ego driven time sink. I love it.

2008-05-14T22:13:00.001-07:00

My Yelp career began about a month ago. It ended today.

For those of you who were around for Watergate.. Yelp is like Mypace + Wikipedia + the Yellow Pages geared toward an artsy, cultured, hipster crowd. There are way to many used record stores reviewed on there for their primary user to be anything different.

In all honesty though, from what I saw, a myriad of different type folks are on Yelp proliferating themselves, and showcasing their writing chops or lack thereof.

I originally got on to leave a good review for my friend bill who owns a coffee shop down the street from RevZilla. I left my review, mentioned the coffee, service and fare coupled with a dynamite Mr. T drop in that I thought was funny.

Yelp was cool... then I realized that people were tagging my breif blurb as "funny", "cool" etc.... than I got a compliment tag... Yelp became like the crazy blog I had in college, only now I had an audience built in and could tell my stories which aren't fit for this blog based upon the nationwide venues that they occurred at. At that point yelp went from cool to awesome - granted your someone who likes to tell a good story or two for no other reason than to get a good laugh.

So for about a month when I was bored I scribed a story or two and ended up writing about 9 restaurant / bar reviews which spawned a handful of random feedback.

Well today I woke up to handful of messages and much to my surprise my review of the House of Chen, one of our favorite "late nite" philly food spots, was the "review of the day" and my goofy mug was plastered on the front page for Philadelphia. Sweet.

So now, after realizing that witty writing can actually get noticed on a grander scale, you would think I would be more inclined to build out my stable of "stories" further... but nah the excitement has peaked and the novelty has waned... back to driving incremental sales and tracking cohort analyses for RevZilla full time....

Kudos to yelp though. Great site, solid design, smart functionality & usability scheme. Well done, sir. Well done.

Click to see my HOC review.

Booch

Hilarious November Rain Breakdown

2008-05-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

This has nothing to do with anything relating to marketing or Revzilla.com (which is still killing it btw)

Someone took the time to breakdown the classic 9 minute GNR video for November Rain and it is hilarious. Aside from the fact that they are my favorite band of all time, this post is completely irrelevant to my blog.... however this is my blog, and I will do what I want.

An Excerpt:

"Minute Five: A helicopter flies around Slash, giving us rockgodness from all angles, although possibly putting his cigarette out in the process, which is not a bad thing, as it will kill you. Smoking, I mean, not guitar solos. Although if any guitar solo could kill, it would be this one. You can tell Slash is a rock god because his stance is so wide he is almost doing the splits. "

Hilarious. The rest of the article is just as good if you remember anything about the video.

Click Here for the Article

Fire and Motion

2008-04-28T08:57:00.000-07:00

"When I was an Israeli paratrooper a general stopped by to give us a little speech about strategy. In infantry battles, he told us, there is only one strategy: Fire and Motion. You move towards the enemy while firing your weapon. The firing forces him to keep his head down so he can't fire at you. (That's what the soldiers mean when they shout "cover me." It means, "fire at our enemy so he has to duck and can't fire at me while I run across this street, here." It works.) The motion allows you to conquer territory and get closer to your enemy, where your shots are much more likely to hit their target. If you're not moving, the enemy gets to decide what happens, which is not a good thing. If you're not firing, the enemy will fire at you, pinning you down."

See Fire and Motion Article

Great article relating to business operations vs growth and how critical it is to keep improving your product. If you aren't innovating you are losing ground.

And no, I was never an Israeli Paratrooper.

Anthony

I love the smell of commerce in the morning....

2008-04-05T15:19:00.001-07:00

Wasn't that the famous quote?

So the slow season storm (Jan & Feb) has been weathered and things are looking up - way up. The weather is braking all over the country and our sales our climbing in tune with the ever rising mercury this time of the year. We have also picked up all but a few of the major brands we needed to carry to be a contender.

We are comfortably in the black, our Philadelphia store and dotcom are developing a solid following and the reviews floating around the net about us are nothing short of glowing.

At this point, we are a far cry from the day our first order was placed. After fulfilling the silver frame-matched paint ($12.50) and receiving delivery confirmation of the package we realized that after shipping we actually ate $4.00 on the order. It wasn't the most fun part of the journey for our founding four - but we can now look back fondly at the moment our joy turned to terror surrounding our first order.

Right now we are concentrating on improving overall user experience and product selection, making key hires where need be, and smoothing out the supply chain via technology and methodical revision at any and all touch points.

Its a fun time to be a founder on a brisk pace to seven figure revenue in our first year - in an industry thats down 25% from last year no less. Booyah!

It also was especially sweet to recently get genuine excitement from one of our friends who built, branded and sold StubHub last year to eBay and is basically "retired" at this point.

There is definitely no lack of focus here either: Customer Service, Customer Service, Customer Service.

Young businesses are definitely Mr. Toad's wild ride.. Fo' Sheezy.

Anthony

Curse you Mechanical Turk! ... and Rick Astley

2008-03-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

So today we noticed an interesting referrer while tailing our ecommerce website's production.log file

(As written and posted by Matt to news.ycombinator.com)
========

http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=ZXN2S645SXNTG6SRHV5Z (Notice the link at the top of the page links to revzilla.com (my site), sometimes it swaps to an amazon.com product so just refresh that page if it does)

Apparently someone had created a mechanical turk which is paying people to reword / paraphrase our product descriptions (I assume) for use on their competing website. We can't be having that so I added a simple rule to redirect any Mechanical Turk referrers to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU :D

===

This isn't a game... its the retail wild west. Don't mess with the RevZilla boys - we'll make you famous.

Click Here to see our post of this on news.ycombinator.com and read other folks responses.

-Anthony

Customers are great. Evangelists are Better.

2008-03-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

This is why customer service is always king no matter what your business.

Posted today, pulled directly from Superbikes Forum:

KLX*** Wrote:

=============================================

Motorcycle, Dirt Bike and ATV Helmets, Gear and Accessories - RevZilla Motorsports

I have been in the market for a new textile jacket for the past three weeks or so. I searched around online for the lowest price for the Teknic Freestyle Jacket and came across two websites. It was either revzilla.com or ridegear.com.

I browsed through revzilla.com's website and found that it was very user friendly and possibly amongst the best website layouts I've ever encountered. A notch above newenough.com in my opinion.

I spoke to Matt who handled my order; I originally emailed him to inquire if they were willing to pricematch a price I found elsewhere, at which point he happily complied.

I ordered this on Thursday (3/13) night, shipped out Friday (3/14) and had it at my door by noon on Monday. (3/17) (Fastest shipping I've ever encountered and it was free shipping as well)

I created this thread so people would be less hesitant to purchase from Revzilla.com since they are fairly new. I'd like it to be known that they have excellent customer service, fast shipping, and some of the lowest prices I've seen on the internet.

Thank You Revzilla!

Ninja edit: P.S. I'd like it to be publicly known that I have never nor do I now have any affiliation with Motorcycle, Dirt Bike and ATV Helmets, Gear and Accessories - RevZilla Motorsports or it's affiliates. Furthermore I have not received any type of monetary compensation for this review. This review is soley for the purpose of sharing a great experience I had.

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Blow away their expectations and turn customers into evangelists - further extending your reach, brand and reputation.

We're on a mission to raise the bar. So far were succeeding.

Anthony Bucci

I am not dead I swear. Blogging for my Biz today.

2008-02-22T15:54:00.000-08:00

It's been a while for this thing... I miss it.

This time around I thought I would get more bang for the buck out of a post on our companies web site about the dealer expo in Indy last weekend.

click here to see it

Anthony

Maybe they'll leave me alone next time.

2008-01-07T23:18:00.000-08:00

Besides waking up today and dropping my long distance business carrier for Comcast (we were getting hosed), I also had to run a bunch of errands in town.

It was blustery 67 degrees today in Philly - a sure sign of the looming apocalypse - so when I stopped on the corner of 4th and South for a lunchtime Jim's Steak I was rocking one of my classic "no meetings today" uniforms: Velour pants, my Risque video hat and a long sleeve black tee.

I basically fit right in with the South St crowd so I don't know why I surprised when I got stopped in front of Starbucks by a CN8 anchor with a camera man to be interviewed about McDonald's apparent foray into the overpriced and overrated high-end coffee market place. Way to be 3 months late on that breaking story Comcast!

So picture me in my goofy outfit, on South St, now about to be interviewed by a "man-on-the-street" team concerning what I think about MCDonald's competing with Starbucks and who would I buy from.

I have no doubt that they were expecting my response to follow the same format of most folks they already interviewed today with something along the lines of "To me it look like a leprechaun, to me." so I decided to screw with them.

I was asked an honest question which I could have answers simply with a "I hate both and refuse to pay for coffee", which is really how I feel. Just for kicks though I decided to throw them a curve ball - unfortunately for them, brands, their products and their positioning is something that I evaluate daily for work.

I'm not sure if they were expecting a response chock full of coffee price point analysis, evaluation of emotional customer response and the reiteration of the fact that at Starbucks you're paying extra for a (canned) authentic & exclusive experience from an aspirational coffee brand.

I think by the time I was done I had two blank stares looking back at me, really not sure how to react. Hilarious.

My closing argument was at least soundbite worthy, "Prices aside, I am not sure how happy I am going to be trusting the same guy who makes the mcmuffins to craft me my high-end coffee."

No doubt a complex answer to a simple question. They definitely got more than they bargained for. I had to chuckle.

I just hope when they run the story there is no amateur sketch involved. Who all seen the leprechaun say yeah!

Anthony Bucci

Rock & Roll, Motorcycles & High Fashion? ... The Perfect Storm

2008-01-02T23:49:00.001-08:00

Guy Trebay of the NY Times wrote in an article today:

"Despite the wholesale plundering of biker culture by the design world, there is plenty of gold left to mine from this $9.7-billion industry. The average age of motorcyclists continues to increase, to 41 today, from 32 in 1990, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council. Yet, paradoxically, biker style looks fresher than ever. This, at least, was the impression one took away from the 27th Annual Cycle World International Motorcycle Show, which blew into Manhattan at the Javits Center last week."

If you don't know already my new company (RevZilla.com) is focused on the "lifestyle" of the motorcyclist and lesser so on the parts they need to keep their rides running.

The article is great and basically speaks to and validates most things that we had speculated about in varying degrees up until this point. Its nice to see other like minded, non-hell's-angels taking notice of the readily apparent collision between utility inspired biker wares with high-end aspirational products and lifestyle apparel.

See the Article: Stealing From a Biker Gang

A great example is the striking similarities between the Xelement Biker Boots pictured above and Mark Nason Distortions pictured below. If I didn't tell you, could you tell that the Xelements are $75 and the Nason's cost $450?

Somewhere in my due diligence I picked up this snippet: Other than golf & motorcycles, its difficult to name another major lifestyle or hobby that people partake in from the time they are 5 years old until they die.

...and no World of Warcraft doesn't count.

Its tough to do, and considering I find golf to be about as exciting as Tolstoy - Motorcycles have been a front runner in my mind for launching a new lifestyle based business for a while. I really don't think I could write product descriptions about putters all day even if I had to.

Each day my partners and I evaluate and reevaluate our offering, competitive advantage, positioning and strategy based all available information.

Lately its been going extremely well, with traffic, conversion rate and revenues climbing steadily week by week. A few times it's felt like I am in the middle of the Perfect Storm, with things just falling into place.

Now if I can get Mark Nason to let me carry his boots and Tommy Lee to write a testimonial we'd be all set.

Anthony Bucci

Guitar Hero + Slash + Chrome Hearts inspire Awe & Loyalty through Authenticity

2007-12-28T23:56:00.001-08:00

If you know me even the least bit, you know that the things that I am into on a personal level typically garner the same level of fanaticism as my work.

Anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes with me over the last 3 years surely knows at least the following 3 things about me.

1. I "enjoy" Avalon during the summer months.

2. Guns N' Roses is my undisputed favorite band of all time.

3. I was never more excited to work with any brand more than I was when I signed Chrome Hearts. (Sorry Trump. Close second.)

For those of you who do not know:

Chrome Hearts in my opinion is the epitome of a luxury lifestyle brand that is successful on their own terms. They have been around since the late 80's and for the longest time have escaped the radar of the main stream by design. The goods (Jewelry, Apparel, Furniture, Crystal) are sophisticated and as high quality as they are high priced. They are aspirational in all senses of the word and they cater to the elite crowd through their 10 stores around the world. Their creedo is "F*ck You" and that sentiment adorns everything from their product to their marketing strategy. You have to love it. I do. I can't go to New York without hitting their store on 64th St and buying something I don't need.

Some CH Rings.

I first discovered them about 4 years ago and a few years later was fortunate enough to land them as a client. I had multiple visits to their L.A. HQ and got to go behind the scenes and spend time with all of the people in the CH family who contribute to their culture and identity including their founder. I'll never forget that during the first meeting I had with them, their founder had to cut out of our 3 hour meeting early because his 2pm was Nicky Hilton who had been getting antsy waiting for us to finish. Just a really cool experience all around set right in the heart of Hollywood.

I had been a big fan before, but once I got to get my hands dirty and got to hang out with them, they had a fan for life. Its the hardest I had to ever consciously try not to "geek out" repeatedly during a client meeting.

People who identify with them can only describe the experience as something akin to the affinity they would feel for their favorite rock band. The weird part is they don't make music they make jewelry... and boxer briefs that cost $60 bucks a pair among other things. (Yes I own some :-\)

My point in all of this is really related to the authenticity issue that I typically encounter on a regular basis and it always annoys the heck out of me. My biggest pet peeve is that half-way feeling that always seem to happen when you have an interaction with a brand or product that is skewed from its normal positioning or slightly modified for a broader appeal. Think the combo KFC-Taco Bell-Pizza Hut restaurants. Separately great (for fast food), but together they equal abbreviated menus, soggy tacos and stale biscuits. Like kissing your sister.

Now let's go 180 degrees take a look at Guitar Hero. To the surprise of everyone it actually took 3 installments and a sprinkling of Slash from GNR in the game for me to dust off my PS2 and buy my first video game since college.... And to the surprise of no one, I beat the game and became completely addicted to it in a matter of hours.

Now being a die hard fan of GNR and Chrome Hearts, when I finally unlocked Slash in the game I was interested to see what level of detail the game developers maintained when porting the rock legend into a video game character. My expectations were not high, but Slash and CH are pretty tight and its no secret that Slash wears CH gear on a regular basis.
Here is where the shock comes. I am going to go on record and be the first person to point out that for once somebody got it right. Slash is absolutely wearing the classic Chrome Hearts Oval belt buckle in all platform versions of the game. Needless to say I was pretty amazed, along with probably being the only person who in America who would play a video game and check out a characters jewelry for correctness. My girlfriend just looked at me and shook her head as I reveled in my moment.

Slash in-game, with magnified belt buckle.

The real belt buckle.

I wouldn't have spent an hour to write this if Slash was wearing generic gear - I wouldn't have been shocked at all - it is just a video game. But that extra authenticity has now even further transformed me into an evangelist of Slash, CH, and now also Neversoft, who makes Guitar Hero.

Whether it is Chrome Hearts, Guitar Hero or Pizza Huts, the consistency of the brand experience and living up to consumer expectations is paramount in maintaining the a customer's loyalty and opinion of your brand. What truly sets the great brands apart is their attention to that detail. It still shocks me when the big guys screw it up both online and off.

Every day my brand and business strive to make that same impact on our customers. I know other smart marketers do the same.

I'm also kinda hoping that CH sends me a belt buckle at cost for the glowing press. I don't really feel like dropping $1500 on a belt right now. Sheesh.

Anthony Bucci

ps - I know that was a long winded way to make a simple point, but I do love reliving that CH story. Also all the images I used came from google.

There have got to be some royalties coming my way from Spencer Gifts.

2007-12-26T19:46:00.002-08:00

In my previous vendor life, Spencer Gifts was absolutely toward the top of the list as far as noteworthy national accounts that I closed were concerned.

They were a fun brand to work with, were fledglings at eCommerce at the time and due to the nature of our long-term client-vendor relationship I had the chance to be part of many aspects of their business both online and off.

Our firm obviously positioned, designed, built and marketed the site, but some of my favorite things were the off the wall "well somebody's gotta do it" type tasks that came up which I ended up taking on.

It was through that account that I was able to (jokingly) add Casting Director to my resume. We did many photoshoots around different aspects of their business and seasonal events. Some had crazy Halloween themes, others had strange emo/goth kids in weird off-color tee's and others had scantily clad bikini models that I convinced to pose in semi-compromising positions with each other. Tough to say which ones I liked the best. (laughs) I even jumped in a picture here and there when we were short on folks.

My take-away from all of it was that some things worked and some things didn't. We tried not to make the same mistake twice and always tried to stay authentic. Authentic is always the absolute key - young people know when their being treated with kid gloves immediately. As a whole the 16-24 demo is not an easy one. They are as fickle as they are frugal concerning impulse buys online.

Now fast forward three years to last Friday.

For those of you that do not know, I am going to be a Dad this June. I thought it would be hilarious to go to the mall and pick up something irreverent for my child-to-be which I could stick in my girl's stocking, so naturally I wandered into Spencer Gifts to eventually find this:

Perfect.

After throwing the Onesie (is that really what that product is called?) under my arm I took a lap of the store for old times sake only to be transported into the bizzaro world.

Much to my chagrin I am on the side of every single piece of product packaging in the damn lighting section. Literally 100's of boxes in every store. Ridiculous.

Right now I am wondering if I ever signed a release. I guess it serves me right for commingling with the "talent".

I bought this laser thingy just as a souvenir. $14.99 for a box.

And you thought my days as a washed up male model were over. Ha!

In all seriousness - I'll pass on the royalties from the photo - just as long as I am able to cash in on the favor that they now owe me at some point.

Anthony Bucci

ps - Just so no one points it out in the comments, yes I took the lap of the store looking for cool guns n' roses action figures - so shut up.

pps - here are some links to the photoshoots Shoot 1 Shoot 2