We -- and so some of the policies that I've just outlined are all aimed at creating an environment that is conducive to entrepreneurship. I was -- I see all kinds of amazing things when I'm President -- I read about them, of course. I love meeting with our entrepreneurs and I love hearing the stories about how businesses get started. And a lot of times, believe it or not, there is -- as I'm sure you know, that they all happen like at a kitchen table. And sure enough, out of that simple idea and hard work -- because I understand as well as anybody how hard it is to build a small business, and it's not -- it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of focus and patient spouses, and sometimes spouses actually watching the money to make sure the other spouse doesn't blow it. (Laughter.)

So how about this guy. He is a guy who paid his way through college, and he -- by diving into water hazards and selling the golf balls that he found. And evidently he had this dream, and so he graduated and decided to take his idea and make it into an Internet golf shop. And it's a prosperous business, and he's creating jobs.

Now, he didn't need a government program to figure out how to do that. It's his ingenuity. It was his desires to not only pay his own college education, but then to convert that into something that would be good for consumers -- obviously if it wasn't good for consumers he wouldn't have much of a business history -- good for the people he's employed. And all he needed was the ability to dream and willingness to work hard. And this is what defines our country. It's the spirit that makes America so unique and so great. And that spirit is found in the room.

And our -- the role of government is to never stifle that spirit, is to encourage the spirit, reward the spirit, and always pay -- and always remind our citizens that we are a vibrant and prosperous and hopeful nation, because we are a land blessed with vibrant and hopeful people. God bless you, and thanks for letting me come by. (Applause.)

Google analytics, the search engine company’s free web analytics offerings, is saving RockBottomGolf.com an estimated $3,000 to $5,000 per month in what it might otherwise spend on an analytics package, co-founder and chief operating and marketing officer Todd Rath tells Internet Retailer.

RockBottom has been using the free tool for a little over two years, with the implementation done in-house. “We probably could go in more in-depth with the help of a consulting company, but little by little, over time, we have gotten what we wanted out of it on our own,” Rath says. He adds that RockBottom, No. 300 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, has considered other web analytics packages from different vendors. But given the price tag versus online sales volume, he says “For us, it’s not enough to make up for the cost.”

Rath says one key use for Google Analytics at RockBottom is watching checkout flow—at what point in the checkout process do customers fall out, and how many of them fall out—to flag the site’s business managers on any problems. “If I had a 50% checkout success rate one day and 23% the next day—this lets me see that,” Rath says. “It could have been that we changed some imaging and started to confuse people, or maybe we had some kind of hiccup last night and we didn’t even know. This way we can tweak things to try to get more customers through checkout.”

Rath grants that Google’s free analytics tool lacks the segmentation capabilities of more advanced web analytics packages. But given the fact that the tool does let Rock Bottom locate customers by geographic region or even city, and given RockBottom’s fairly homogenous target market, advanced segmentation capability such as behavioral segmentation is less of a need than it might be for other retailers, he says.

“If we were the type of retailer that is multi-segmented and selling to men, women and children, it would probably start to make sense,” he adds. “But 90% of our customers are men, and they are golfers—it’s very straightforward.”

RockBottomGolf.com Named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Hot 500 List
Leading Online Golf Retailer Ranks #159th on Entrepreneur Magazine’s annual list of fastest growing companies in America
August 13th, 2007

ROCHESTER, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--RockBottomGolf.com, a top internet golf retailer, announced today that the company has been named by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of America’s fastest growing companies in their annual “Hot 500” list published in their August 2007 issue. RockBottomGolf.com ranked 159th out of 500 and had a 586% growth over four years between 2002 and 2006.

Since its founding by three high school friends in 2000, RockBottomGolf.com has grown to more than $21.4 million in revenue by 2006. RockBottomGolf.com is one of the largest Internet golf sites in the world specializing in closeout golf merchandise. RockBottomGolf.com offers a wide variety of name brand golf merchandise including Callaway, Mizuno, Adams, Wilson, Taylor Made, Nike, Tommy Armour, Ogio and more. RockBottomGolf.com supports the needs for golfers around the world. With its strategic carrier agreements, RockBottomGolf.com is able to serve more than 30 countries in the world in 3 days or less allowing everyone to enjoy RockBottomGolf.com deals as well as Rock Bottom shipping rates. In 2006, RockBottomGolf.com saw record sales and launched their multi-channel online strategy across Shopping.com, Google, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Overstock.com, BizRate, PriceGrabber.com and many others. RockBottomGolf.com has over a 99.8% customer approval rating between all the marketplaces they sell on and market in.

“We’re excited to be recognized by such a prestigious magazine and named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s 500 list,” says Todd Rath, Chief Operating and Marketing Officer of RockBottomGolf.com. “Our team’s dedication, hard work and commitment have enabled us to grow our business at a rapid pace and become one of the top golf sites worldwide.”

According to Entrepreneur, the Hot 500 rankings are compiled with the help of Corporate Research Board, a research organization. Entrepreneur and CRB started with CRB's database of more than 19 million U.S. businesses and considered only those businesses that met the following criteria:

* Must have been founded no earlier than 1998 and no later than 2002
* Company sales in 2002 must be $100,000 or greater; 2006 sales must not exceed $1 billion
* Must have positive job growth between 2002 and 2006
* Must have a minimum level of sales growth or a sales growth quantifier of 1 or higher between 2002 and 2006; the growth quantifier is a measurement that combines percentage and absolute growth.

Only 95,000 businesses -- or 0.5 percent of the 19 million businesses -- met the above criteria. Entrepreneur then contacted the businesses with the greatest growth to confirm eligibility. To be eligible, the founder must be actively involved in the company, the company cannot be a spinoff or a division of a larger company, and company sales for 2006 must be at least $1 million. From this list, the Hot 500 was selected.

The Hot 500 list can be found on the Entrepreneur Website at http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/hot500/index.html.

About Rock Bottom Golf

RockBottomGolf.com, a top Internet golf retailer prides itself on bringing rock bottom prices to all its customers known as ‘Rock Heads’. Founded in 2000, by Todd Rath, Tom Rath and Shannon Smith, the RockBottomGolf.com team utilizes their education and past work experience in technology, engineering, and finance to make their systems and processes as efficient as possible. Quality products, fast and stellar service is what makes RockBottomGolf.com what it is today, one of the largest Internet golf sites in the world specializing in closeout golf merchandise. Their products can be found at www.rockbottomgolf.com and www.rockbottomgolfballs.com. RockBottomGolf.com is headquartered in Rochester, NY with their distribution center located in Suffolk, VA.

Golf balls get their own site at Rock Bottom Golf
July 20th, 2007
Internet Retailer

When is it time for an established e-commerce site to launch a separate sub-category microsite? When it frees up the merchant to profitably expand free shipping offers, frees up more space for detailed product content and elevates the merchant’s listings in searches for sub-category products.

That’s the thinking at RockbottomGolf.com, No. 300 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. which this month launched RockbottomGolfballs.com. The site is on a Yahoo storefront, like Rockbottom’s main site, and it uses the same back-end technology. Co-founder and chief operating and marketing officer Todd Rath says the dimensions of a pack of a dozen golf balls, which are packaged in small, uniformly sized boxes, allow RockbottomGolfballs.com to advertise and deliver free shipping on any order over $99.

Free shipping is a marketing edge for any online merchant, but it’s something Rath doesn’t offer widely on the main site, due to the varying sizes and shapes of all the products in the broader assortment. A single order could require several boxes to transport products of different sizes and incur multiple shipping charges, he says.

“As shipping costs go up, every day every retailer in the country is trying to figure out how to pack more things into the same box,” he adds. “The big thing we went after is that we wanted to be able to sell products on this site that will fit in the same box.” Items on which the site cross-sells shoppers – gloves, for example -- are also small and will fit into a box with golf balls.

The golf ball-dedicated microsite also stands to move higher in natural rankings under searches for golf balls than the main site with its broader assortment, Rath believes. It offers expanded content on golf ball product features that will boost its relevancy to search engines. “Over time, as we add information and data and customer reviews, Google will grab onto it as the number one golf ball site,” he adds.

Rath says the new site was promoted to Rockbottom Golf’s subscriber list of 200,000 in e-mail newsletters containing widgets linking to a specially created landing page on RockbottomGolf.com that explained the new site and offered the opportunity to link to it. “We didn’t want to send people directly to a new site. We wanted to put them first on a landing page that explained what the new site was about, then they can click from there,” he says.

When snow hits the course, Rock Bottom Golf takes its online show on the road
January 2007
Internet Retailer

Cold weather and snowy golf courses aren’t usually good tidings for golf equipment retailers selling into northern climates, but to Rock Bottom Golf, they mark the beginning of a busy winter season in places like Cleveland, Detroit and Minneapolis.

All it takes is a couple of tractor trailers, a team of employees ready to hit the road, and a ready audience at dozens of trade shows.

Rock Bottom drives two tractor trailers filled with displays and products to consumer golf shows for 12 or more consecutive weekends—attending consumer golf shows in 25 to 30 cities from January through March, and producing about $1 million of total sales that were on course to hit $23 million in 2006, says co-founder Todd Rath, who is chief operating and marketing officer.

At each show, Rock Bottom sets up a booth where it collects e-mail addresses, sells products and meets face-to-face with many of its regular online customers. “Our booth looks like our web site,” Rath says. “We collect a couple of thousand e-mails at every show.”

In addition to serving as a marketing and customer outreach tool, the show circuit also helps Rock Bottom to turn inventory. The retailer tries to turn its inventory five or six times each year, and the winter show circuit usually accounts for at least one of those turns, helping Rock Bottom to clear the racks in time to introduce new merchandise for the busy spring season, Rath says.

Rock Bottom sends out two crews in two tractor trailers to attend two shows each weekend. One of its display booths is 1,600 square feet, the other half that size.

The booths are set up to display and sell merchandise ranging from golf clubs to apparel, and many shows have driving ranges where they can test out Rock Bottom’s equipment.

The retailer owns one truck with a 40-foot trailer and leases the second one. In the early days, Rath would help drive the trucks but now assigns dedicated drivers among the teams of employees that attend the shows.

“Our employees like meeting the customers,” Rath says, adding that workers get paid extra through a separate company Rock Bottom set up to manage its show attendance.

RockBottomGolf.com packs 25% of PPC spending into the 25 days of Christmas
December 21st, 2006
Internet Retailer

October and November is when most of the staff at RockbottomGolf.com take their vacations—for golf equipment sales, the season’s sales have slowed down. Right after Thanksgiving, however, they start up again with a vengeance as shoppers seek gifts for golfers. That’s why 25% of the company’s online ad spend is packed into the approximately 25 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a strategy that’s helped push RockBottom's sales up 30% to 35% higher than last year, according to chief operating and marketing officer Todd Rath.

“From Black Friday on is go time,” says Rath. “Golf is a huge sport for gift-giving.” Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is widely recognized as one of the first major shopping days of the holiday season and the day when many retailers “go in the black,” or begin earning profits for the year.

Toward that end, RockBottom this year expanded its gift items significantly with more clothing and popular items like rangefinders. Rath also says the efforts of earlier in the year, to make the web site interface cleaner and improve navigation, are helping out during the seasonal crunch. “We have grown our RockBottomGolf.com business greatly through the year. I see fewer and fewer transactions coming to us through eBay,” he says.

Rath adds that increasing spending on Google AdWords and Yahoo Search drove significant new traffic to the site through the year. Based on those results and results from last year’s holiday season, Rath has upped his PPC ad spending on ad spending in the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, helping more shoppers to find the site.

Helping to drive sales once shoppers get there is a free shipping offer that’s run since Thanksgiving, with a twist: free upgraded shipping that reduces a normal four- to five-day shipping time to three days or less. “We are going to give you three-day shipping because we just want you to have your gift and be satisfied,” says Rath.

RockBottom is even promising three-day shipping on international orders, though it’s careful to note it cannot be held liable for the actions of in-country customs officials. However, “Fed-Ex, our core shipper, is pretty used to our international volume and the customs departments in the major countries are too,” says Rath. “So we’re able to push and reach that time limit. Three days or less has been a huge win for us.”

RockbottonGolf.com is No. 290 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

Australia an easy if distant target for Rock Bottom Golf
November 2nd, 2006
Internet Retailer

Even with taxes and shipping costs factored in, online retailer Rock Bottom Golf is driving up more sales of golf equipment to customers in Australia and New Zealand as well as in Europe, Todd Rath, co-founder and chief operating and marketing officer, tells InternetRetailer.com.

“About 13% of our sales last year were to foreign markets, and this year it will be about 15%,” Rath says. Average order value for international sales is about $150, compared to $100 for domestic orders, he adds.

Rock Bottom Golf, No. 290 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, is on course to do $23 million in total sales this year, up from $18 million in 2005, he adds. About half of those sales are processed directly through RockBottomGolf.com; the rest of the company’s sales are through consumer trade shows and through third-party sites including eBay.com, Amazon.com and Overstock.com.

Australia in particular has emerged as a major market, where golf equipment sells for far more than Rock Bottom’s retail prices including shipping and tax, Rath says. “Australia is a huge market for us,” he says. “It’s great because it plays after our season in the U.S.—they’re just heading into their summer now—and we can ship them entire sets of clubs priced cheaper than Australians can buy in their own country.”

Rock Bottom sells a Ben Hogan driver, for example, for about $89, which amounts to $190 in Australian dollars including shipping and tax. But that compares to a price of about $259 for the same club sold at a golf equipment shop in Australia, Rath says. Australia’s golf equipment market is set up so that virtually all sales are through relatively high-priced golf pro shops, without a U.S.-style discount channel of large sporting goods stores, he adds.

Rock Bottom gets much of its overseas business through natural search and paid search on several shopping engines, including Shopzilla.com, Shopping.com, NexTag.com, Smarter.com and GolfReview.com, Rath says.

To push its foreign sales even further, Rock Bottom is planning to launch a multi-lingual site that will be capable of e-mailing promotions in the local languages of foreign consumers, Rath says, adding that he’s eyeing Japan as one of the next markets to serve.

Scratching the surface
Online golf retailer’s sales drives getting longer

ERICK SORICELLI
Inside Business - Hampton Roads
Monday October 16, 2006

The Suffolk warehouse storing RockBottomGolf.com’s product inventory can look typical on first glance.

Brown cardboard boxes are stacked all over with golf clubs, golf balls, golf bags and other merchandise sticking out. A gray conveyor belt snakes around the 35,200-square-foot building, stacked with products ready to ship.

But that’s about the extent of a typical warehouse. Every so often, the shades of brown and gray are replaced by reddish-brown signs and banners. Somewhere on the signs is “Scratch,” a cartoon-looking, red-bearded caveman and the Internet golf retailer’s company mascot. Scratch’s face is surrounded by slogans like “A Clean Cave Is A Happy Cave” and “A Happy Rock Head Stays A Rock Head.”

“We try to brand it not only for the customers, but for the employees,” said Todd Rath, 30, RockBottomGolf.com’s chief operating officer and local partner.

“Rock Heads” are how the company refers to its 155,000 dedicated international customers, who have helped to spur sales from $3.1 million in 2002 to a projected $24 million this year.

That estimate would be above last year’s $18 million, which placed RockBottomGolf 276th in Inc. magazine’s 500 fastest-growing national private companies.

While RockBottomGolf is headquartered in Rath’s native Rochester, N.Y., its three partners – all high school friends – and 25 employees are split across two states. Todd runs operations with 16 employees in Suffolk and Virginia Beach; Shannon Smith, chief financial officer, is in Rochester, and Tom Rath, chief executive officer and Todd’s older brother, is in Lake Placid, N.Y.

Following the model of low-price retailers Big Lots and TJ Maxx, RockBottomGolf buys leftover products from golf manufacturers and re-sells them at discounted prices. Golfers may recognize the brand names TaylorMade, Adams Golf, Izzo and Titleist among its inventory.

“Chances are if anyone can find a home for it, we can,” said Tom Rath, 33. “Some of our critics refer to us as the ‘graveyard of golf.’ Oftentimes, we may be selling the last 3,000 drivers a manufacturer has ever made.”

And as Todd Rath explains, the choice of Hampton Roads as the product warehouse and shipping hub was not at random.

“We can get all the way to Chicago and back in two days ground service,” he said.

Via contracts with UPS and FedEx, the company, which takes more than 5,000 orders a week, estimates it can ship from Hampton Roads to 62 percent of the U.S. population in two days.

As each of the partners describes, the idea and original product for RockBottomGolf almost literally dropped from the sky, and into country club ponds.

Smith, Tom and Todd Rath all went to Wheatland-Chili (pronounced “Chai-lie”, not like the food) High School outside of Rochester. Tom Rath spent many summers and late nights during high school and college at Purdue University, which he and Todd attended, scuba diving for golf balls.

“We paid our college tuition that way,” Tom Rath said.

The golf balls were then cleaned and re-sold. In 2000, the Raths were IBM software consultants and Smith handled financials for another consulting firm. But the “dot-com” industry collapse soon left all three unemployed, yet with another idea on the tee.

“It was all eBay,” Smith, RockBottomGolf’s CFO, said. “eBay was hot back then. Money was to be made.”

In 2002, eBay was where the partners established RockBottomGolf as a retailer, and it now plays a minor role in its operation. Beyond its early growth past eBay and now in its sales, the partners don’t plan to stop at just golf.

Web sites like rockbottomskis.com or rockbottomsports.com now default to RockBottomGolf’s Web site. Eventually, RockBottomGolf wants to become RockBottomSports, with many other sporting goods products available.

The Raths are optimistic about that goal. Todd, pointing toward the west end of the brown box-filled warehouse, said, “We’re pretty expandable here.”

“If it wasn’t for the Internet,” Tom said, “I couldn’t compete head-to-head with big sporting goods.”

The partners have tapped into a golf equipment industry that had $3.5 billion in sales last year. But Larry Weindruch, spokesman for the Mt. Prospect, Ill.-based National Sporting Goods Association, says that number doesn’t completely reflect the market.

“The last five years have not been the best years for golf,” he said. “The market has not been really conducive.”

The issues, he said, relate to sliding popularity and equipment expenses. An individual golf club can sell for $200 to $1,200.

While unfamiliar with RockBottomGolf, he did say sporting goods retailers are making a slow shift to the Internet, introducing features such as online orders for in-store pickup.

But there are very few, he said, who are Internet-only, let alone sell closeout merchandise

Scratch Meets Bush!
Posted by Scot Wingo on October 05, 2006 at 11:21 AM in Of interest to eBay sellers

We learned today that two of our customers - RockBottomGolf and DesignerAthletic have been invited to the White House to talk about the challenges facing small businesses in the U.S. I'm not sure if its an online angle or even eBay focused, but it's pretty cool (and scary). These are two of the most outspoken and thus fun folks to work with.

I'll let everyone know how the event turns out next week. George and Todd promised to grab some White House Silver for us, so that will be cool to put in the display case in the office. I find myself wondering if Todd has a suit & tie now that I think about it...

Public Recognition for 10 eBay Sellers Who Sold for New eBay Giving Works Promotion
Sean Milliken, Executive Director of MissionFish, wrote a letter to Bill Cobb to inform him of 10 eBay sellers who participated in the first ever Spotlight on a Cause campaign with eBay Giving Works.

September 13, 2006

Bill Cobb
President
eBay North America

CC:
Kristin Cunningham, eBay Giving Works
Brad Williams, VP Communications
Gary Briggs, SVP, CMO Marketplaces
The eBay Community

Dear Bill,

I wanted to send you a personal note to thank you for your powerful stand on behalf of the 8,700+ members of the nonprofit community that have chosen to participate in eBay Giving Works. Your recent decision to implement the eBay Giving Works Fee Credit Policy (effective October 1st) is yet another example of eBay’s continued commitment to creating economic opportunity for the nonprofit sector through the power of the eBay Marketplace and the passion of the eBay Community. Given your own recent public “call to action” at eBay Live! in Las Vegas, I hope you don’t mind that I decided to make my appreciation public as well.

I’m happy to tell you that members of the professional eBay selling community have responded to your call by participating in the eBay Giving Works “Spotlight on Education” campaign. There’s no greater resource than America’s youth, and under your leadership, the eBay community is making a profound impact on the organizations they count on for critical services.

A few of the eBay sellers who have stepped up to list a significant amount of their inventory with eBay Giving Works include:

- George Trantas and the team from Designer Athletic (designerathletic)
- Sarah Davis and the team from Fashion Phile (fashionphile)
- Mike Jansma and the team from Gemaffair (gemaffair)
- Nir Hollander, Charlie Hollander and the team from Gem Stone King (gemstoneking)
- Harris Giddings, David Yaskulka and the team from Harris Michael (harrismichaeljewelry)
- Dan Horowitz and the team from Only Estates (onlyestates)
- Jo Beth Rath, Todd Rath and the team from Rock Bottom Golf (rockbottomgolf)
- Wes Shepherd of Channel Velocity and the team from Saeco (Saeco-usa)
- David Duong and the team from Shoe Metro (shoemetro)
- Drew Friedman and the team from White Mountain Trading Company (whitemountaintrading)

Not coincidentally, in June, Scot Wingo, Michael Jones, Max Leisten and the team at ChannelAdvisor became the first eBay Certified Solutions Provider to make eBay Giving Works available to high-volume professional sellers.

The nonprofits benefiting from the “Spotlight on Education Campaign” include nearly 100 youth serving organizations including: Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Big Brothers Big Sisters, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Boys Hope Girls Hope, Communities In Schools and more.

On behalf of all of these vital organizations and the young people they serve, I send you and all the eBay Giving Works sellers my heartfelt thanks. It is an honor for all of us at MissionFish to work with eBay and its vibrant community of buyers and sellers to make a difference.

Sincerely,

Sean Milliken
Executive Director
MissionFish

PS We look forward to witnessing the continued passion and excitement of the eBay community as we shine the Spotlight on Breast Cancer Awareness in October!

Spread Your Message Far and Wide
Getting listed on comparison shopping search engines is an effective way to reach new customers

By Laurie Zuckerman
Feb/March 2006

Todd Rath is on a mission: He doesn't want to miss a single person searching the Web for golf equipment. "I often search online for products that we sell," says Rath, the owner of Norfolk, Va.-based Rock Bottom Golf (http://www.rockbottomgolf.com), a discount golf retailer.

"If my competitors come up in a search and we don't, then I know what I have to do-find a way to join the party."

Some of the best online soirees recently came of age. Shoppers are flocking to shopping engines like BizRate.com and Yahoo Shopping to compare the offerings of many merchants side by side. The benefit for small-business owners is an educated customer base poised to purchase. According to Forrester Research, 75 percent of users eventually purchase a product they researched on these sites.

In March 2004, Rock Bottom Golf started marketing on Shopping.com with impressive results. The discount golfing business gradually added BizRate.com, GolfReview.com, NexTag.com and PriceGrabber.com.

The return is great, says Rath, who spends about 2 to 4 percent of each sale to be listed. And the sites have accelerated Rock Bottom Golf's branding strategy. "We are a growing business," Rath says. "We have to let people know who we are and what we are doing. The more clicks we can get, the better our future."

But the road wasn't always smooth. Rath's first problem was time. Uploading and maintaining the data feeds ate up resources. So Rath contracted with ChannelAdvisor, a software and services firm that connects retailers to online marketplaces. "They automated the process," Rath says.

Automation is important, he says, because if the data gets outdated you risk broken links, frustrated customers and an eroded return on investment. "Don't put garbage out there," Rath warns. "Make sure you have accurate links that drop shoppers right into product pages-not your home page."

Rath also learned to avoid sites that don't attract the right customers. MySimon, for example, may be a leading shopping engine for some businesses, but for Rath, it was a golf wasteland, and Rock Bottom Golf quickly pulled out. "We use tools to measure our ROI," Rath says. "We will only expand as long as there are customers to win."

Not all eBay sellers are sold on Skype
Internet site's top merchants mixed on whether they'll use the online calling service as sales tool.
December 8, 2005: 4:44 PM EST
By Amanda Cantrell, CNN/Money staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - EBay hopes the merchants who peddle their wares on its Web site will embrace Skype, the online calling service it bought recently, but some of the auction site's top merchants say they have no plans to use it as a sales tool.

The Internet auction site bought Skype, a Luxembourg company that allows users to make phone calls over the Internet, for $2.6 billion earlier in the quarter.

Speaking at the SG Cowen & Co. Internet conference in New York, a panel of eBay's top sellers had mixed reactions when asked if they planned to use Skype as a customer service tool on their Web sites, with the naysayers citing costs as a primary concern.

"Not in a million years," said Todd Rath, chief operating and marketing officer for online golf equipment retailer Rock Bottom Golf, one of the merchants on the panel. "We can't have the phone or Skype ringing off the hook," he said, adding that having to answer Skype calls would add to the cost of selling and pressure profits.

But Nir Hollander, president of Gem Stone King, an online jewelry store, said he plans to incorporate Skype into his platform, saying he thinks it will be especially useful for sales to overseas customers.

"I have no choice -- I need to implement this feature," he said.

EBay spokesman Hani Durzy acknowledged that Skype is not for every seller on eBay, particularly those peddling low-cost items that make for uncomplicated transactions. But sellers of big-ticket items have expressed enthusiasm about using Skype as a customer service tool, he said.

"We think a number of power sellers see the potential of this, even without having seen any integration or implementation of it," he said.

At the time of the Skype acquisition, some analysts and investors expressed concern over the transaction, citing Skype's hefty price tag.

EBay hopes that by combining Skype with its online payments business PayPal, it will create an online shopping experience that incorporates communication -- a selling point for eBay, which is considered an online community. Skype is expected to generate $200 million in revenue next year.

Skype offers software that users download to call other Skype users for free, as well as a range of paid services, such as the ability to make calls to non-Skype users, and voicemail.

Competitors are now jumping into the fray. Yahoo! said Wednesday it is launching a new version of its Yahoo Messenger instant messenger tool with calling capabilities at prices that will undercut Skype's.

EBay sparked protests from some of its smaller merchants early this year when it raised some fees for selling merchandise, according to published reports.

Rath said that while he thinks eBay is a great tool for online sales, particularly for liquidating hard-to-sell items, rising fees have made it more difficult to generate profits from selling on eBay. Rath said he is having better luck with paid search advertising on Google.

EBay is doing brisk business so far this holiday season. The e-tailer ranked number one among Web sites on "Cyber Monday," the Monday after Thanksgiving, which is becoming one of the busiest days of the year for online retailers, according to Nielsen NetRatings.


Why Rock Bottom Golf sees bigger web markets beyond eBay
September 14, 2005
Internet Retailer

By diversifying its merchandising plan RockBottomGolf.com is ending its days as an eBay-only merchant. Rock Bottom, No. 255 in the Internet Retailer Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites, began as a web retailer three years ago by selling close-out golf equipment exclusively on eBay.

But this year only about 35% of all e-commerce sales will come from eBay auctions, while 65% will come from other sources. In 2006, the company expects RockBottomGolf.com to generate about 70% of all sales, with eBay accounting for the other 30%.

“EBay got us going, but now we are a more diversified retailer,” says Todd Rath, chief operating and marketing officer for Rock Bottom. In the last 18 months, Rath says Rock Bottom has diversified its marketing plan. The web retailer now has an active search engine marketing plan, but the biggest source of new sales leads and visitor traffic is coming from the new arrangements Rock Bottom has with shopping comparison sites and portals such as Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com and GolfReview.com.

With a more diversified marketing plan, Rock Bottom expects to grow web sales by about 25% in 2005. The company is also investing more sales dollars in certain comparison shopping sites depending upon individual monthly results. “If a certain shopping syndication arrangement generates $100,000 in new monthly sales, we like to return between 10% and 15% of the total for the next month,” Rath says. “It’s a good way to get a better return on investment and maximize the arrangements that are generating the most sales.”

Rock Bottom uses Yahoo Stores as its e-commerce platform and web store front. The company is also moving into a new and larger fulfillment center and holding initial discussions with vendors about purchasing and installing a more robust supply chain management program. “We talking with all the big names,” Rath says.

In a very crowded online shopping segment, Rock Bottom will stick to its niche of selling close-out golf equipment. Sales are growing and Rock Bottom is becoming a more mainstream web retailer because new marketing efforts such as a frequent e-newsletter that goes out to an opt-in list of more than 100,000 subscribers are helping to diversify the company’s customer base. “We aren’t afraid to purchase ladies left-handed clubs from a manufacturer because we know we can move them,” Rath says.

ChannelAdvisor Announces Rock Bottom Golf Customer Win
ChannelAdvisor Technology Provides Rock Bottom Golf with Multi-Channel Strategy

Research Triangle Park, NC - October 22, 2004 - ChannelAdvisor Corporation, the leading provider of channel management solutions, announced today that Rock Bottom Golf, the top discount golf retailer and one of eBay`s (NASDAQ: EBAY) top sellers, has chosen ChannelAdvisor`s software and solutions as its infrastructure to help scale its business on eBay. In addition, Rock Bottom Golf has chosen ChannelAdvisor Catalog Syndication as their automated solution to create and maintain datafeed connections with multiple shopping engines, content sites and portals while side-stepping the complex challenges and scalability issues.

Five years ago, Rock Bottom Golf launched on eBay as one of the first sellers specializing in sporting goods and golf equipment. Rock Bottom Golf`s eBay Store has proven to be a highly effective sales channel. Rock Bottom Golf offers a wide variety of name brand golf merchandise including Callaway, Mizuno, Adams, Wilson, Taylor Made, Nike, Tommy Armour, Ogio and more. Their products on eBay can be found at http://stores.ebay.com/Rock-Bottom-Golf, or direct on their e-commerce site at www.rockbottomgolf.com.

"We are very excited about growing our eBay sales and launching our multi-channel online strategy," says Todd Rath, chief operating officer of Rock Bottom Golf. "We chose ChannelAdvisor as our partner because they are the leader in channel management solutions. Their flexible platform and ability to provide a scalable solution will meet our current and future business needs as we expand into new online channels."

ChannelAdvisor Catalog Syndication will allow Rock Bottom Golf to leverage a single integration with ChannelAdvisor into an unlimited array of traffic partners. ChannelAdvisor establishes and maintains the connections and manages the publishing of multiple complex and diverse datafeeds to a broad host of traffic partners including Shopping.com, BizRate, PriceGrabber.com and many others. The ChannelAdvisor Catalog Syndication solution frees companies of the complex technology scalability and maintenance issues while enabling them to focus on growing their business and serving customers.

"We`re very excited to be working with Rock Bottom Golf to provide them with a multiple marketplace strategy allowing them to cascade product from one to many marketplaces to maximize yield," says Scot Wingo, chief executive officer and president of ChannelAdvisor.

About ChannelAdvisor Corporation
ChannelAdvisor provides technology and services that enable industry-leading companies, small businesses and individuals to use online marketplaces to acquire customers and maximize inventory yield throughout the product lifecycle. Our solutions combine best practices, innovative software applications and integration technology to dramatically accelerate marketplace performance. ChannelAdvisor`s clients and strategic alliances include IBM, Best Buy, Sears, Motorola, eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon.com. ChannelAdvisor Corporation is headquartered in Research Triangle Park, NC. For more information, visit http://www.channeladvisor.com/.

About Rock Bottom Golf
Rock Bottom Golf prides itself on bringing Rock Bottom Prices to all of its customers. Headed up by Todd Rath, Tom Rath and Shannon Smith, the Rock Bottom Golf team utilizes their education and past work experiences in technology, engineering, and finance to make their systems and processes as efficient as possible. They have located their only distribution center in the middle of the east coast in Norfolk, VA bringing products to 63% of its customers within 2 days with standard ground service. Quality products, fast and stellar service is what makes Rock Bottom Golf what it is today, the largest eBay player in Sports and making waves on the World Wide Web with www.RockBottomGolf.com. The team at Rock Bottom Golf also brings various other products to the consumer on eBay with Rock Bottom Closeouts. These products can be found at http://stores.ebay.com/Rock-Bottom-Closeouts.