Entrepreneurs getting work done at shipping sites
SANDRA GUY sguy@suntimes.com November 4, 2011 9:38PM
Tom Bellino and Bob Giovannetti, co-own 4 UPS Stores. They talk about how they have watched the ups and downs of the recession by who uses the UPS store for his/her "home office." October 13, 2011 I Brian Jackson~Sun-Times
Article Extras
Updated: May 9, 2012 10:00AM
Tom Bellino is watching small-business trends play out every day as entrepreneurs use his UPS Stores as offices, drop-off points and mail-strategy consultants.
Bellino, who co-owns four UPS Stores with fellow Northwest Side native and St. Patrick High School alum Bob Giovannetti, has seen a drastic decline in the numbers of pharmaceutical salespeople.
In their place are entrepreneurs working as eBay sellers, real-estate flippers and home-improvement and commercial security-system installers.
The trends are especially apparent at the Bucktown store.
“For a home-theater systems installer, we get all of the equipment delivered here,” Bellino said. The installer does commercial jobs, too, so the store is the dropoff point for everything from big-screen TVs to the sophisticated video systems installed in bars and restaurants.
“We can deliver [the equipment] if it cannot fit in the installer’s vehicle and if it’s not too far [of a distance],” Bellino said.
An interior design consultant arranged for a table and big-screen TV to be dropped off for clients moving to Chicago. The Bucktown store stored the TV equipment until the family moved.
Indeed, high-end furnishings are the latest products to go online with the debut of two websites — Gilt Home and Dering Hall — focusing on specific designers’ sofas, dressers, bookshelves and armoires.
And studies show that eBay’s online marketplaces sold $5.49 billion in goods to U.S. shoppers from April to June 2011, a 14.4 percent jump from the same time in 2010.
The UPS Stores’ new clients show how businesspeople are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure customer loyalty and to grapple with a changing, challenging economy.
To help clients with promotions, Bellino touts the United States Postal Service’s “Every Door Direct Mailing” program, which lets businesses mail marketing pieces at 17 percent of the normal price to all addresses listed within a chosen radius. The business owner pre-pays for the deliveries of the letter-sized promotions. Since no names are put on the mailers, the postal carrier delivers one to each address.
Entrepreneurs are rejiggering their budgets in other ways to cut expenses.
Candice Canty, owner of Dog-a-holics, a Lake View pet shop and grooming-and-training service, said she has downloaded and creates her own shipping labels from her home computer, and uses the UPS Store three to four times a year to print banners, posters or fliers.
“By spending $300 to $400 on printing a flier, I can put them in my shopping bags and get my regular shoppers to come in more often,” she said.
Desiree Grode, a Chicago trust and estate lawyer who works from her Near North Side home, replaced her two landline phone lines with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) lines from OOMA.com so she could save $750 in phone bills each year.
The OOMA service lets Grode listen to voicemails online, receive e-mail notices with the caller’s phone number when she gets a voice-mail message and automatically routes incoming calls to her cell phone in case of an outage.
Grode also uses a combined printer, fax, scanner and copier in one machine, and does much of her legal research for free online.
Grode said she uses three phone lines for her business, and had asked her phone carrier for years to reduce her rate — to no avail. She is even considering making her fax line a second OOMA line, saving another $360 a year.
She read about OOMA in the May edition of Consumer Reports magazine, which noted that the hardware cost $200, but its reliability and voice quality were impressive.
Technology watchers say the Chicago area is seeing its biggest entrepreneurial growth in companies doing e-commerce, digital media, computer systems design and software as a service, which comprises on-demand software that users access with a browser.
The growth stems from a variety of industries, including media, law, manufacturing, advertising, health care, transportation and financial services, needing software, services and apps, said Ed Longanecker, executive director of the regional TechAmerica nonprofit.
Comments Click here to view or make a comment