Volume 2, Issue 14 June 22 - July 5, 2000

You can buy airline tickets online: why not luggage for the trip? Ebags sells all kinds of bags at all kinds of prices. Jon Nordmark, founder of Ebags, talks about the company's beginnings and where Ebags is going today.

Q: Describe your type of business.

A: We sell bags for people of all kinds of lifestyles, for whatever purpose, from handbags, to luggage, to accessories like wallets. We also make custom orders. We have a corporate solutions business: we make large orders for companies, orders for seven figures. One of our most popular products is by a company called Chrome, like banana bags.

Q: Who started Ebags when, and why?

A: I started the company. Four other people joined me to start the company in 1998. They invested in it and worked for eight months without pay. I was trying to put together a plan that people would want to work together with me on. Had several ideas developed, but everyone wanted to do the bag one.

Q: How quickly did the company grow?

A: In the first year, our revenue grew 21% per week for 52 weeks.

Q: What did you and your partners do before starting Ebags?

A: Four of us came from Samsonite, the fifth came from Wherehouse Music.

Q: What types of clients do you have?

A: Johnson & Johnson, clients at trade shows, especially Internet-related such as Jupiter, Liberty Bowl, NBC News, Time Life, U.S. Airforce, National Credit Union Administration. 700,000 people per month visit our site.

Q: How many employees does Ebags have?

A: We have ninety people working here, which is a good ratio of people to our sales level. We've never gone through a layoff. We have a great environment. In about a year and a half, we've lost only three people. Every month, we've been hiring six or seven people. We're trying to slow hiring down. We want to become more productive with every person, and plan to get to 130 people. The average age of our employees is 27.

Q: What is your company goal?

A: We're trying to be the world's largest seller of bags and accessories. The economics are really tough in the brick and mortar world, and products don't sell that fast. A company buys merchandise, and it sits there. There's no Home Depot of bags. We have the opportunity of creating that online, to create a global store. We've got Europe set up, the infrastructure is there, but marketing is expensive, so that's one of our next steps. We're developing software for airlines and hotels.

Q: Describe the work environment at Ebags.

A: Pretty cool. Ebags grew out of a home operation, where five people were working out of home offices. I would work in my robe, until I had to go out and get some food. Because of that, we'd get together in shorts. By the time we got into an office, it just carried that flavor through. When people came in, they brought all this funky stuff with them. Our office is almost like a dorm room; there's a tent in our designers area, they go in there and play Nintendo, fooz ball. We have tournaments with our neighbors, whoever loses has to give a barbecue for the other company. There's a guy with a big mosquito net over his cube, with beads hanging in front of the door. Today there's two dogs in here. There are three people with fish tanks. We've got a lot of funky toys, a basketball hoop.

Q: What kind of group activities does Ebags have?

A: We do stuff like go bowling, movies, Elitch's. We have parties every two to three weeks, everything from going to C.B. & Potts, to a putt-putt tournament where we created holes in the office, barbecues.

Q: Do you have a dress code?

A: Got to wear clothes, don't need to wear shoes. You can wear shorts, Mosquito Net Guy wears shorts all year-round.

Q: What kinds of shoes do people wear?

A: Everything from sandals to loafers. Some people kinda dress up.

Q: What are your benefits like?

A: We have everything from eyeglass insurance, standard medical, three weeks vacation when you start, to stock options, but going public is not our goal. Going public is really just a financing event, it's not the company's goal. We reimburse $30 per month for gym memberships. We have a 401K plan.

Q: What type of personality works fits in best at Ebags?

A: I think a creative personality, driven, independent, execution-oriented, and fun, positive. We're really careful about hiring people; we want to hire someone you'd like to sit with for a long time and have a conversation with. In our first year, we had about 12,000 people submit resumes.

Q: What types of work backgrounds do your employees have?

A: It ranges from large companies, upper management people with experience from direct marketing like American Express and US West, to less experienced people just out of college who are really eager.

Q: What activities are your employees involved in outside of work?

A: A lot of outdoor enthusiasts, sports-oriented, mountain bikers, soccer players, volleyball teams. Ebags sponsors a lot of team sports activities. Climbers, mountaineers: one employee has been to the base camp of Everest, others did some climbing in South America. I've gone up a 20-foot peak in Ecuador.

Q: What do your employees like most about Ebags?

A: I think they like the positive and open work environment, the ownership of their work, the freedom.

Q: What do you like most about your company?

A: The freedom, creating something. Being part of a business creating a lot of jobs, taking care of customers the way they never have before, with the convenience of online shopping.

Q: Anything else you want to say about Ebags?

A: We sell 186 different brands of luggage and 5,000 different items, and we have five websites: Ebags.com; Ebagsgallery.com; Ebagsoutlet.com; Letstalktravel.com, which will merge with concoursez.com soon; and Ebagscorporate.com.

Visit www.ebags.com for more information about EBags.