sept-2017

50 51 FCP EURO ed to grow the online business,”Drozd continues. “It was in the same location as the original brick- and-mortar for about a year. In 2003,we moved to an adjacent building,where Nick and I focused on growing the online business, and we ran it in par- allel to the brick-and-mortar business until 2008. By then, the online business had dwarfed the brick- and-mortar sales, and we were still in a very small facility–under 2,000 square feet–but generating seven or eight million out of that small facility.We wanted to grow the business, but our thoughts and the parents’ thoughts on growth were not aligned, so we ended up splitting away from the parents and moved to Old Saybrook in 2008,where we acquired 25,000 square feet.” “When we moved to Old Saybrook, the brick-and- mortar store was still operational.The online busi- ness continued to accelerate-we were up over ten million.Meanwhile,we’ve got this brick-and-mortar automotive store in Groton, and what we started to observe was a lot of channel conflicts.Automotive wholesale customers that were coming to the par- ents’ store were seeing lower online prices and com- ing to us directly,wanting to purchase from us. Con- versely,we had online customers that were showing up at the brick-and-mortar store who wanted the online prices that the brick-and-mortar store,with its higher fixed costs, couldn’t accommodate. So,we had some pretty significant conflicts for a couple of years.And then,we got to the point where Nick and I bought the parents out, and for a year or two,we were running both businesses under our ownership.We decided to sell the brick-and-mortar store in 2012, to focus on the online business. “By 2014,we had grown the online busi- ness to about $18 million-all of the growth from reinvestment of profits and internal cash flow–no bank line, until last year.That year,we moved the business to Milford, Connecticut.We went into a new facility; we used a material handling system company to help us design the space that was better for the business, better for the culture, better for the employees, and far better for distribution.