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Colin Pape, Founder,? ShopLocally.com/ShopCity.com |
In just four years, Colin Pape has accomplished something with his ShopCity.com Community Commerce Platform that many Internet entrepreneurs never achieve: He has taken his enterprise both cash flow positive and profitable. He has built a portfolio of 8,100 call-to-action ?Shop(Cityname)? geo domains. And on the way, he has taken on Google to free his legitimate and valuable commercial sites from the Big G?s dungeon and placed high in the search rankings where they belong.
And so for the second time since 2010, Colin Pape, Founder of ShopCity.com and ShopLocally.com, is one of our Most Fascinating People in Domaining for 2012.
==> A VISIONARY FROM THE START
Colin has been in the Internet business since the 1990s, when as a teenager he began providing web development and hosting services. Working with small- to medium-sized enterprises made him aware of the challenges for local businesses in having a meaningful presence on the Internet. He launched his first community-based site, ShopMidland.com??(for his home town of Midland, Ontario), in 2000. He was 20. In 2008, Colin sold his development and hosting businesses to concentrate exclusively on growing ShopCity. Today, ShopCity is live in 65 markets: 40 in the U.S. and 25 in Canada, where most of the business and product development efforts on the platform are focused. Some 2,500 local businesses in these communities now subscribe to the program?s online marketing tools, including not only a Web presence, but email marketing and assistance with Google Places, Facebook and Twitter social media platforms. ?We set them up with the core profile on all those other services,? says Colin. Each ShopCity community is also promoted with signage, displays and other visual marketing materials. Have a look.
?A lot of our communities are at critical mass and are getting self-service signups,? says Colin about the organic growth that?s taking place in towns where the service has launched. In some communities, that growth is helped along by partnerships with (or local ownership or management by) the local chamber of commerce, economic development authority or newspaper that uses its ShopCity site as the destination for its own shop local branding and marketing campaign. ShopCorona.com, ShopPaloAlto.com, ShopMountainView.com, ShopBuffalo.com and ShopBirmingham.com are just a few ShopCity domains that have become official hometown shopping and small business portals.
==> SOMETHING MANY WEB ENTERPRISES LACK: ACTUAL FEET ON THE STREET
Growth in local business participation is also the result of another major development that differentiates ShopCity from other Internet ventures. ?We had the opportunity to build a corporate sales team when YellowPages.ca shut down our competitor CanPages.ca,? explains Colin. ?So we brought on 50 salespeople to establish a corporate sales force.?
?These are passionate people that we brought on,? he adds. To be sure of selecting only salespeople who believed in the vision and mission of ShopCity, Colin had applicants write a one-page letter on why shopping locally was important to them. Working in their home communities, mainly in Ontario and British Columbia, this totally remote, totally commissioned sales force provides ShopCity its ?feet on the street? to sign up businesses to participate in the local sites that have launched. Armed with iPads and the ShopCity Affiliate app, the team enrolls businesses, builds the customers? pages and processes everything through ShopCity?s central system.==> SUCCESS AND POTENTIAL ATTRACTS WORLD-CLASS LEADERSHIP
Colin has recently added impressive talent at the top of the ShopCity organization as well.
For example, Roy Ellis, former head of HR for McDonald?s of Canada, has come on board as an investor, advisor and on-site mentor, with active involvement in daily operations, primarily with governance, sales, marketing, talent acquisition and human resources. ?We?re very fortunate to have Roy with us,? says Colin. ?He?s very familiar with the franchise model. He worked his way up from flipping burgers to opening restaurants in Canada and Moscow, to becoming senior VP for customer experience in all of Canada.?And even though he?s not ready to announce the name, Colin says ?we?ve signed up an executive with a lot of experience in directory sales who will be taking the lead in launching our U.S. markets, building the team to sell and support local businesses full time.?
==>?GETTING OFF OF GOOGLE?S BACK PAGES?