Penny Ha' Penny: Too Foolish To Fail? > ReachCustomersOnline.com

Penny Ha' Penny: Too Foolish To Fail?

Posted by TimSlavin at June 14, 2003

Last time, I wrote about my goals for this twice a month column. This week I want to write about a business whose internet experiences provide a terrific example of how a business can use the internet to support their customers. They started small, proved value, then evolved as needed. As a result, they did not overreach. Nor did fear of the unknown stop their efforts.

Imagine an American website in the Connecticut countryside that sells dozens of British grocery and gift shop items without a single picture of any product. The site is advertised only with a classified ad in a British history magazine. In theory, the site should fail. However, for six years the website, http://www.pennyhapenny.com, has contributed to a healthy mail order and in store business for Penny Ha’ Penny.

The Penny Ha' Penny store sells British dry goods and gifts in the Cannondale shopping district in Wilton, Connecticut. Cannondale is a small set of shops set amongst tall leafy tulip trees with a stream that flows past a white picket fence. All the buildings date from the Civil War era, including a one room schoolhouse turned into a restaurant. Even the single platform Metro North train station at the edge of the area is mostly empty although its one track leads to New York City.

In this countryside corner, Penny and Eve started their business on a lark in 1985. Penny wanted to run a food store. Eve wanted to run a gift shop. Their business grew out of bringing foods and other goods home to family and friends in the United Kingdom where Penny grew up. They found one supplier this way and one more supplier in Massachusetts when they formally set up their business.

However, they did not start their business with a business plan and they wound up in Cannondale only because, at the time, rents were half the cost of commercial space elsewhere in Wilton. They also only advertise in British Heritage magazine, a UK periodical, and only with a classified ad at the back. As Penny and Eve say, "We were too foolish to fail."

Their internet efforts followed a similar organic path. In 1997, they asked Penny's son, Adam, to help set up Penny Ha' Penny online. Adam had just started a computer business (http://www.computerboy.com). He needed clients to reference to acquire more clients. Penny and Eve had heard that internet sites cost in the low thousands of dollars but could not (or would not) pay that price. They have always wanted to have photos of products on their website but it never became a priority.

Their first internet effort was built on email. Customers used email to send in orders and Penny Ha' Penny responded with email and shipments. Today this is still a core part of their internet business. They maintain a list of 500 email addresses and send out email on a regular basis, in bulk and in response to individuals. Over time, both Penny and Eve point out, email has proven to be a wonderful way to find and keep people as customers and friends.

Adam set up their internet site in 1997 with Webshop, free Perl software that he found in a thick book about the Perl programming language. He modified the software a bit and worked out how to convert his mother's Filemaker product database into a flat text file that Webshop could use. The site currently is hosted at Interland along with 20-30 other sites that Adam supports.

The internet site and email are viewed as advertising and marketing tools, an inexpensive way to reach out to old and new customers. They pay Adam about $30 a month for site hosting and maintenance. Penny and Eve respond to the emails and orders generated from the website. They view internet costs as advertising expenses and compare them to what they spend to advertise in British Heritage magazine.

Their internet site still contains few if any pictures of products. "Our customers grew up with our products," Penny explains. "It is enough for them to know we have Beechies or a special kind of biscuits. They'll either email us with their information or use the website to order. It turns out they don't need pictures."

The internet and mail order currently generates about 15% of their business. Penny and Eve don't break down their numbers any further. They don’t need or demand such precision. They average 2-3 orders a day from the internet site, around 5-6 orders a day at Christmas time. About ten people a week sign up on the internet site with their email address. The internet is a profitable part of their business, both financially and in terms of meeting and keeping up with customers.

Penny and Eve may be too foolish to fail but they are also smart enough to succeed online even with a website that has no pictures of the products they sell. In part, they succeed because what works in retail works very well on the internet: a strong product plus the willingness to tweak product offerings plus just enough support to sell the product, and all of it wrapped in a distinctive personal touch.

What they do right:

Used the internet incrementally with email first, then a basic site. Since this combination works fine, they have not over reached.
Relied on relatives initially to set up a basic capability rather than hire an outside vendor.
Use email as a vehicle to connect personally with each customer rather than use email as a de-personalized broadcast medium to blast email to hundreds or thousands of people.
Provide the minimum structure needed to gauge success of their business and their internet efforts. Rather than obsess over every detail, they have fun with the products and the customers.

What they would do differently/better:

"Not really sure what we might have done differently,” Penny said in an email response. "The site has evolved somewhat, pictures being added is the main concern at the moment, and possibly changing the shopping cart system. We want to have an information page etc. eventually and have a few other things in mind. We could probably have had a more "flashy" website, but I don't think that's really our style and I don't think the website should be much different from the way we do business in the shop itself."

Resources Mentioned In This Column

http://www.pennyhapenny.com
http://www.computerboy.com
(webshop)
http://www.interland.com

Penny Ha’Penny
28A Cannon Road
Wilton, CT 06897 map
800-762-7775
203-762-2233

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