Ann Arbor
offers local
e-commercce
alternative

A new online commerce website offers an appealing local alternative to eBay and other national or global auction sites. Ann Arbor Local Market (www.aalm.com) was launched in July, offering classified ads and online commerce for businesses and individuals in the Washtenaw county area.

Ann Arbor Local Market, the product of a new company called Local Market Inc., provides a place for local merchants and individual buyers and sellers to transact business securely and reliably online.

“The idea behind it is that there are a lot of things for which national or global trading sites just didn’t seem to make sense, like that couch worth $200 that you may have at home,” said Dave Jarrat, vice president of marketing for the new company.

Local merchants can attract business by listing merchandise online at Ann Arbor Local Market, without all the time and expense of launching a big web presence.

John Roach, general manager, added, “We also wanted to use online commerce to support the local economy and local nonprofits. Neighbors can trade with each other, earmark proceeds for local charities and use local merchants to help keep money in the local economy and keep the tax base strong.”

There’s no cost to make purchases and a small fee to sell items on aalm.com. Unlike local newspaper classified sites, the Local Market allows buyers and sellers to actually conduct transactions online, Jarrat said. And unlike eBay, the site allows sellers to automatically donate proceeds to the local charity of their choice, through its “Share the Wealth” program.

“The ‘Share the Wealth’ program makes it easy for residents to turn their used goods into donations for local charities by earmarking a portion of their sales proceeds. The charity gets much needed funding (without the expense and time commitment required to run a thrift store) and the seller gets a tax break,” explained Roach. “Best of all, since everything is handled automatically through PayPal, there’s no paperwork burden.”

The company has four shareholders and three full-time employees: Jarrat, Roach and sales vice president Lynette Ferguson, an alumnus of the University of Michigan who was instrumental in bringing the team together. The startup was self-funded by its four owners.

Ann Arbor Local Market plans to add auctions to the site in the coming months, according to Jarrat. “We want to give people a wide range of choices for conducting online commerce.”

Ferguson said that she is unaware of any other local online commerce sites similar to Ann Arbor Local Market, but added that if the idea takes off, the team may consider taking the idea to other markets.

Name: Brian Saha

Business: The Pinconning Cheese Co. Deli & Fudge Shoppe

Web address: www.pinconningcheese.com

Products: “Over 200 varieties of cheese (specializing in Pinconning cheese) and gourmet food items, including Michigan meat products, smoked fish, homemade fudge and our popular pizza loaves (sold by the case), as well as gift boxes with a variety of food items.”

Years on web: 8 years

Percent of sales from web in current year: 10
Increase in web sales from previous year: “20-30 percent growth a year—much higher growth than in the brick-and-mortar store.”

Website designed by: Life Steps Information Services.

Typical customer: Displaced Michiganians

Main method of promoting site: Search engines, as well as printing the Internet address on all marketing materials.

Biggest challenge: “Keeping the website accurate and updated, and making sure the website administrator makes the requested changes.”

Worst mistake: “Initially I did our website, and that worked for a while, but then we decided to hire a web design company to handle it. Searching for the right firm, we found a lot of fraudulent places, or ones that had hidden charges for everything—it’s easy to find yourself spending far more than you need on website design and administration.”

Web retailing tip: “Learn how to use keywords to make your site pop up in various search engines, or make sure your website administrator does this.”

Awards and special features: “Our website administrator, Life Steps, won an award for the design of our site. The site offers information about our unique product—the history of Pinconning cheese, what makes our product unique. We also have a separate printable catalogue and an order page to make it easy for people to order by fax or mail if they prefer.”

Outlook for online retailing: “Nothing but up. For products like ours, I can imagine not needing the physical store, becoming strictly a virtual store. There’s so much potential here, when you use economies of scale. The Internet opens your market up tremendously, a market that was never there five or 10 years ago. With just a virtual store, you could reduce overhead and other costs, like having more employees just to cover store hours.”

Comments: “There is a limit to our bigger market. We get inquiries from around the world—Indonesia, Australia and Japan, to name a few. But we can’t always ship our products overseas, because of regulations on exporting cheese and meat products.”

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