Melissa Horvath, owner of Sweet Water Décor, at the company’s Cranberry Township production facility. Submitted photo
It’s impossible to deny Amazon has made shopping a breeze for those inclined. Instead of braving the elements — and the crowds — at the local mall, shoppers can simply log on to a computer, navigate to the tech giant’s website and let the mouse do all the heavy lifting.
Provided your credit card is in working order.
But not only have Amazon and other companies engaged in the burgeoning e-commerce field made it easier for shoppers — they’ve made it easier for those looking to sell their wares.
Just ask Melissa Horvath, Kelly Carney and Ashley McCandless.
They’re among the local merchants who have taken the e-commerce leap in the last several years and now boast businesses that either do all or some of their sales online.
Millions of potential customers
Horvath, known as Melissa Weibel when she graduated from Butler High School in 2006, was working as a financial analyst at FedEx Ground when she launched her business — Sweet Water Décor — as a creative outlet/hobby about 10 years ago. At the time, she was selling wedding invitations through Etsy, a global online marketplace that sells jewelry, clothing and other items.
At the outset, Horvath’s products were all digital in nature — invitations and custom print art. Then she branched out into coffee mugs, which she made in her basement and would be picked up by the U.S. Postal Service.
Within a year, Horvath said, she quit her full-time job “and I haven’t looked back since.”
Amazon noticed Horvath’s success on Etsy and invited her to join Amazon Handmade, a site that caters to merchants selling handmade goods. Now, she has her own website and still sells on Etsy and Amazon, with her focus on candles and home décor. Her business employs nearly 40 employees and involves two warehouses in Cranberry Township. She said her goods are featured in 7,000 stores, including Macy’s, Nordstrom Rack, HomeGoods and locally at Stacy’s on Main, among other locations.
Horvath said she appreciates having her goods available on Amazon because it puts them in front of millions of potential customers. But she admitted there is a downside to it.
“People can see when your product is doing well and they can copy it,” she said. “They can make it overseas much cheaper than we can produce it here in the U.S. at our headquarters at Cranberry. We’re now known mostly for our candles, and we put good ingredients in those candles. For us to be competing against someone who is overseas is tough.
“That’s what small businesses in America are up against. These companies overseas can make things much cheaper, and the quality isn’t as good.”
Horvath considers herself self-taught when it comes to e-commerce, but she has always enjoyed retail. A finance major and marketing minor at Penn State, Horvath worked at Bath & Body Works’ Clearview Mall store as a high school student. There, she got a hands-on education in merchandising and floorsets — rearranging the way items were displayed depending on the season.
Although she enjoyed that experience, it’s not one she’ll likely recreate with Sweet Water Décor. At this point, she envisions the business as a strictly online endeavor, given all the costs and other issues associated with running a brick-and-mortar location.
“With e-commerce, you can sell on multiple platforms, on social media and in other stores,” she said. “It’s much more profitable. The thing I like about our business now is that we’re in so many boutiques in the U.S. and in Pittsburgh. They get to pick the products that are great for their customers in their areas.”
Storefront and online presence
While Horvath is content to stick to e-commerce, Kelly Carney operates Eva Bryn Shoetique, a brick-and-mortar women’s shoe store on Main Street in Zelienople, and also sells her shoes, sandals, boots, jewelry, statement clothing and handbags online.
She said she launched her website as a platform so customers could see what she was carrying and then come into the store to try things on. But last year, online sales accounted for 4.5% of her overall sales.
Nationally, total e-commerce sales for the fourth quarter of 2023 were up 7.6% from the previous year, according to www.census.gov. E-commerce sales in 2023 accounted for about 15.4% of total sales, up from 14.7% the previous year. In 2014, e-commerce sales represented just 6% of total sales.
Having an e-commerce presence truly came in handy during the pandemic, said Carney, whose business will be celebrating its sixth anniversary in August.
“That really saved my business during all the (COVID) closures,” she said.
The state mandated that her business, and many others, be shuttered for eight weeks. And even after the closure order was lifted, things proved challenging because social distancing guidelines weren’t ideal given the relatively small space she has. “So the website really helped us,” she said.
Getting into e-commerce took some time, said Valerie Rieder, who manages Eva Bryn’s website and offers e-commerce support. At the time, the store had what Rieder called a “splash” page, letting prospective customers know they were there and what the store was about. But to shift into the true e-commerce phase, Carney and Rieder had to find a platform that integrated their inventory system and the point-of-sale system they were using at the Main Street store.
Since then, it’s required a fair amount of upkeep, Rieder said, noting that as new items come into the store, they must be added to the website, and that requires photos and descriptions for each item.
User friendly
Still, all things considered, having an e-commerce presence isn’t as challenging, technologically speaking, as one might think. That’s because Amazon and other e-commerce platforms try to make it as easy as possible, said Sunder Kekre, a professor of operations management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business.
“Amazon and a host of vendors provide everything — they can create a website for you, present your content to consumers, advise you on pricing, advise you on logistics, where you can use their logistics network,” Kekre said. “You can pick and choose what you want. As a business, you pay a cost, but you don’t have to shell out the huge cash you would if you were to do it all yourself.
“These platforms are readily available and the technology is so user-friendly, you can get a high school student who knows how to present material on the web to do it. So you can focus on what you’re good at and let the technology take care of the nitty-gritty details.”
Kekre said e-commerce fits nicely with our post-COVID-19 lifestyle.
He said would-be online entrepreneurs benefit in that they can operate anywhere — they need not be in a large city such as New York. “You can be in a small town,” he said. “If you have a good product, excellent service and delivery and a good presentation of content, word of mouth begins to spread. People will come to your website in large numbers, and you can scale.”
One requirement, though, is that the product has to be worth the buyer’s investment.
“No one wants a shoddy product,” Kekre said. “Customers will walk away. As easy as it is to get in, it’s just as easy to get out. Customers will send a message: The product is no good.”
‘Not just Amazon anymore’
E-commerce is more than just ringing up sales on a site such as Etsy or Amazon, according to Kurt Schimmel, a marketing professor at Slippery Rock University.
“It’s also marketing yourself online,” he said. “E-commerce isn’t just its own separate entity — it’s an extension of and a part of business these days. And it’s incredibly easy for businesses these days.”
For example, Schimmel said, if you owned a bakery, you could send out quick e-coupons to prospective customers if you had excess inventory at the end of the day, and that could drive people into the store for extra sales.
“It ties into your business and becomes another way of talking to your customers,” Schimmel said.
Social media plays into the e-commerce formula because many customers are interested in buying things directly from ads they might find on outlets such as Facebook.
“People thought of e-commerce as going to Amazon, but it’s not just Amazon anymore, and it’s beyond just a webpage,” Schimmel said. “People want to go straight from the (social media) post to the product to buy — they don’t want to go from the post to a webpage and then to the product. They want to go from what they read (on social media) straight to the purchase.”
Although Schimmel and Kekre said you don’t need to be a computer expert to begin utilizing e-commerce, as entities are available to help merchants move into that realm.
One is the Pennsylvania Small Business Development Center at Duquesne University, which makes a consultant available to the Community Development Corporation of Butler County one day each month.
Richard Longo, director of the SBDC at Duquesne, said the SBDC’s job is to help all small businesses in all aspects of business operations. That includes technology and technological innovation, with all services provided free.
Longo said one concern for small businesses interested in entering the e-commerce arena is they often do not have disposable revenue available to invest as larger businesses might. “So they’ve lagged behind in advances in e-commerce,” Longo said.
But the SBDC can provide services to help small businesses gain an advantage in the e-commerce arena.
“We assess their websites, tell them what’s good and what’s bad and how they can improve,” Longo said. “We have value-added business partners in the e-commerce arena that will negotiate with our clients on some discounted rates because of their relationship with the SBDC.”
One such service might be offering small businesses video and media production services they can use to get the word out about their business.
“The old days of knocking on doors are long gone,” Longo said. “It’s all about proactive marketing, websites and e-commerce. These video marketing and promotional sets for clients allow them to maximize the use of e-commerce to get their businesses out there and be identified.”
The all-online route
McCandless, a Butler resident, is one local business owner who had to learn things on her own, and her business — an exclusively online women’s boutique called Savvy Jean Boutique — is approaching its second anniversary.
McCandless said she spent months researching which online platforms would be best for her business. Eventually, she settled on Shopify after reading reams of material and watching numerous videos.
“That was a different ballgame for me,” she said. “Every night I’d be studying and researching (e-commerce) and on top of that researching different clothes and price points.”
McCandless said she wanted to go the all-online route — as opposed to having a brick-and-mortar presence as well — because it’s less expensive and reflects her own approach to shopping.
“We tried to make it what we do,” she said. “Ninety percent of our shopping, we do online. The normal person now shops online.”
McCandless, whose background is in accounting, runs the finances for her boutique and also works for United Plate Glass. She initially hoped the boutique might enable her to cut back on her “regular” job. “But we’re not busy enough to do that,” she said.
As for the e-commerce aspect of her business, McCandless said she is by no means an expert.
“Every day is a learning day,” she said. “I could never think I’ve learned everything. Every time you open something, you learn something new. We’re constantly changing the algorithm on Facebook to reach more customers. And we change our website to make improvements.
“We have a handle on it, but there’s always room to grow.”
This article first appeared in the June edition of Butler County Business Matters.
Melissa Horvath, owner of Sweet Water Décor at the company’s Cranberry Township production facility. Submitted photo
Products being moved at Sweet Water Décor’s Cranberry Township production facility. Submitted photo
Workers prepare items at Sweet Water Décor’s Cranberry Township production facility. Submitted photo
Workers prepare items at Sweet Water Décor’s Cranberry Township production facility. Submitted photo
Kelly Carney, owner of Eva Bryn Shoetique in Zelienople, packages an order at the store on Friday, May 17. Morgan Phillips/Butler Eagle
Kelly Carney, owner of Eva Bryn Shoetique in Zelienople, helps customer Karen Frank as she tries on shoes on Friday, May 17. Morgan Phillips/Butler Eagle
Employee Beth Miller straightens a display at Eva Bryn Shoetique in Zelienople on Friday, May 17. Morgan Phillips/Butler Eagle
The inside of the Eva Bryn Shoetique as seen on Friday, May 17. Morgan Phillips/Butler Eagle
Kelly Carney, owner of Eva Bryn Shoetique in Zelienople, helps customer Karen Frank as she tries on shoes on Friday, May 17. Morgan Phillips/Butler Eagle
Employee Beth Miller straightens a display at Eva Bryn Shoetique in Zelienople on Friday, May 17. Morgan Phillips/Butler Eagle
Kelly Carney, owner of Eva Bryn Shoetique in Zelienople, poses in her store on Friday, May 17. Morgan Phillips/Butler Eagle
