Bulletin E-Edition:
After surviving two bouts of cancer, Brian Gallagher — in his Bend home with his wife, Cathy — started a Web-based business to resell a variety of organic products from a single site. Gallagher said the site, Cathy’s Organic Superstore, now sells more than 2,500 organic products.
Dave Martinez / The Bulletin
On this Web site, everything’s organic
To solve their frustrations, couple set out to fill a niche
By Andrew Moore / The Bulletin
Published: August 25. 2009 4:00AM PSTAfter surviving colon and prostate cancer earlier this decade, Brian Gallagher, of Bend, converted to an organic lifestyle. Along with his wife, Cathy, they switched their diets and filled their home with organic products.
But because they did most of their shopping online, the retired software salesman said it was a chore to remember where they had purchased everything when they needed replacements. Good customer service was spotty. And prices for organic products seemed to track 20 to 30 percent higher than comparable non- organic products.
“The decision to do this really evolved out of frustration,” Brian Gallagher said. “We thought we could make an impact by addressing those frustrations, and give people just one site to remember.”
Earlier this year, Gallagher and his family moved to Bend from Arizona, where they had recently started Cathy’s Organic Superstore, an e-commerce site filled with nearly 2,500 organic products, ranging from clothing and bedding to diet supplements and nonperishable foods. Included are products from several Central Oregon companies, including coffee from Strictly Organic Coffee, vacuum-sealed water bottles from Hydro Flask and barbecue sauce from Oregon Dan’s.
Gallagher moved the company to Bend to take advantage of the state’s lack of a sales tax, but he and his wife said they also wanted to live somewhere that was more accepting of a green-minded lifestyle.
Because he’s an online vendor, Gallagher said his overhead is low, which translates to savings for shoppers.
He also offers additional savings to shoppers who become members, which enables them to purchase items at discounts of between 35 and 70 percent, depending on the product.
The $47.95 membership fee currently lasts for life, though Gallagher said he may make it annual for future customers if the business grows as anticipated.
Though he keeps some inventory on hand, most of the products on his site are shipped directly to the customer by the manufacturer.
Gallagher also strives to offer personalized customer service. The site’s phone number is visible on every page, and it rings through to Gallagher, who said he’s able to help customers track down hard-to-find products and sometimes arrange for delivery of custom products.
“We’re trying to be the Amazon.com of healthy products, I think that’s a pretty good description,” Gallagher said. “(We) have a breadth of products nobody else has, and personalized service.”
Gallagher answered a few more questions in an interview with The Bulletin.
Q: Why did you decide to start your business in Bend?
A: We missed seasons, but also wanted to start the business in a green-minded community, and Bend kept making our list. Plus, there’s no sales tax, so customers can purchase items anywhere in the country and not pay sales tax.
Q: What are you doing to drive traffic to your site?
A: We recently hired a search engine optimization firm, but we’re getting lots of word-of-mouth recommendations on blogs and the Internet, so the message is getting out there.
Q: What has been the biggest challenge so far?
A: Making people aware of us. Everyone we talk to, we’re getting rave reviews — people think we are onto something, filling a niche that wasn’t filled — but you have to get your story out.
Q: What do you envision for your company in five years?
A: I think in five years I envision us to be a huge business. We have a concept of satellite stores, where you can see products and order them online and have them arrive at your front door days later with no sales tax. There would be a few items you could take home, like food and clothing, which are more impulse items, but our concept is to start doing satellite stores because you can do it very inexpensively when you’re not carrying huge inventories.
Q: Can you still provide personalized service as the company grows as you’ve envisioned?
A: One of the things we decided when we did this is we thought we could do it better than what’s out there. One of our goals is to get the business going so we can hire people, and get a warehouse and a storefront and create jobs, but we’ll never lose sight of the one thing helping us to grow, and that’s personalized service. If there’s one thing that differentiates a successful business from others, it’s how they treat their customers.
Andrew Moore can be reached at 541-617-7820 or amoore@bendbulletin.com.
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