Wedding favor firm grows online
Business goes from basement to warehouse in 6 months

Brad and Jennifer Fallon started their company in January. Since starting, they have had to move four times to larger facilities. "Originally, we thought we were going to have a little home business," Brad Fallon said.

Brad and Jennifer Fallon created www.myweddingfavors.com earlier this year with the idea of creating an online wedding favors store. The business has grown to six paid employees working for the business, which ships 50 to 60 orders a day all over the world, putting the site on track for more than $1 million in sales by year's end, the Fallons said.

"My message is that other people can do (e-commerce) for a living, too," said Brad Fallon, 36. "Six months ago, I didn't know what freight shipping was."

Shortly after the Fallons married, the couple decided to launch a Web site featuring wedding favors, mementos given to wedding guests as a keepsake of the ceremony. The couple invested about $1,000 in the initial venture to advertise and open the store. The store went online at the beginning of 2004, offering a variety of favors from personalized mint tins and key chains to wedding cake-shaped candles.

Fallon, who works in the computer engineering field, used his skills to ensure the site placed high on search result lists on the Yahoo! and Google search engines.

The site also advertised on Google and other Internet advertising services. They also advertised in Wedding Bells magazine but found a greater response from online advertising, Brad Fallon said. The site receives about 4,000 visitors a day. Although advertising and search engine results contribute to the site's success, the products, prices and customer service are an important aspect, said Jennifer Fallon, who now works for the business full time.

It's easier for a person to buy favors at the site than to buy them in a store, she said. Also, with favors priced at only a few dollars per item, gifts can be bought for a large guest list at a reasonable price.

"You can't really go into a business here and buy 150 candles," she said.

There's also a more unique and personalized selection of products, she said.

"You're not going to find that in a retail store," said Jennifer Fallon, 34.

The rapid growth of the business has created some growing pains. Six months have seen the business grow from occupying a basement to a bedroom to a warehouse and now an even bigger warehouse to store inventory.

"It's been a bit overwhelming," Jennifer Fallon said.

Although the late 1990s saw many e-commerce Web sites go out of business, an Internet business can be a success, especially if it focuses on a niche market, said Mickey Gee, a retail professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

"Their market is so small you could never roll out" a brick-and-mortar business, Gee said. "But the Web gives you an opportunity to expand the size of this niche market."

Some of the Web site's customers are in Singapore, Ireland, Australia and the United Kingdom, Brad Fallon said.

"It's wild to get orders from all over," he said.

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