Growing Our Projector Equipment Business From $13M To $19M/Year In 2022 Alone [Update]
This is a follow up story for ProjectorScreen.com. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 2 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
My name is Brian Gluck, and I am the founder and President of ProjectorScreen.com; we are the leading experts in projection equipment and sell projectors, screens and related audio-visual equipment to both the residential and commercial markets.
We focus primarily on the mid-to-premium segment of the market and provide an unparalleled level of pre-sales advice and specification as well as post-sale customer support.
Here is the link to my previous coverage here on Starter Story.
While we do not have a flagship product per-se; we have established ourselves as one the largest independent retailers specializing in projection equipment and have become the authority in the Ultra Short Throw Projector / LaserTV space.
We’ve been fortunate to experience considerable growth consistently over the past several years, and 2022 was no exception, growing from around $13M to over $19M in gross revenue.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
Our goal for 2022 was to reach $15,000,000 in sales. We exceeded that goal by over 25%, achieving over $19,000,000 in revenue.
With this growth comes the need for more employees to manage it all, and we have added another four members to the team in the past year to help ensure we can still provide the top-tier service to our customers that we are known for.
Hiring the right team in any organization is always a challenge. Candidates may sound amazing on paper and interview well but fail to meet expectations once the rubber meets the road.
We've found our candidates by both posting jobs and utilizing the resume search options of some of the major job boards.
We have been incredibly scrutinous of all candidates and have had great success finding people who have excelled in their roles.
Invest in people. You’re one person, and you can’t do everything yourself.
We have hosted several events in our facility in partnership with authoritative independent editorial entities and popular forums, which have also helped get us additional exposure and further establish our authority in this segment.
We have also helped introduce several new brands in the projection space as we are sought out as partners for emerging companies looking to establish themselves here from abroad and being born here in the USA.
In March of 2022, we hosted the UST Showcase in partnership with AVSForum, the web’s largest audio-visual forum.
In August of 2022, we partnered with the web’s largest projector database and trusted review website, ProjectorCentral.com, to host the LaserTV Showdown. This event was the largest in scope and scale and quickly established itself as the definitive “shootout” type of competition for ultra short throw projectors.
Another significant growth factor was the emergence of our influencer affiliate marketing channel. We realized significant added revenue and considerable brand exposure by partnering with tech influencers.
We found these tech influencers by researching who was reviewing projectors or talking about building home theaters with a solid following and producing quality content. Part of the appeal of having them work with us is that we have an extensive gear library and could loan or provide them with projectors to review.
We also offered better commission rates and longer conversion windows than affiliate programs from big retailers like Amazon. By working personally with this targeted group of influencers, we built relationships with them so that we were the first place they’d turn to about getting projectors to review. As we made these affiliate relationships, we leveraged their success to entice other influencers to work with us.
One area we changed our marketing efforts was SEO. Our digital marketing efforts are entirely handled in-house. Based on limited bandwidth and changes to Google’s algorithms, we steered away from doing link building and pivoted instead to focusing on writing higher-quality content. One example was an in-depth guide to how much a home theater costs to build. By relocating our efforts, we haven’t seen a reduction in organic traffic and instead saw conversion rates increase.
By focusing on writing higher-quality content and not on link-building, we were s able to dedicate a whole day each week to writing. This allowed us to churn out several quality pieces that generated higher engagement and better traffic.
Another significant change for us was increasing our spending with Google and Bing Ads. We raised spending by 64% but at the same time saw a 65% increase in revenue which translated to reaching over $1.2 million in profit from our paid channel.
We achieved this by relying more on the platforms’ smart bidding capabilities rather than trying to wait for enough conversions for a person to make bidding decisions. We fully embraced the power of negative keywords to limit the targeting of auto bidding.
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
Our biggest challenge is a result of our growth. As order volume increases, so do the customer service, accounting, and financial demands.
Additionally, supply chain issues have made inventory management more of a challenge, and we have had to become less reliant on manufacturers and suppliers having inventory on hand and have had to make sizable investments into our inventory levels.
Brands recognize us as an authority in our niche and that we have significant influence. Unfortunately, we got burned by one brand that used us to help become established, only to engage in deceptive and unscrupulous business practices.
I will certainly be more careful about whom we help go to market here in the USA to prevent a similar experience in the future.
From an advertising perspective, one platform change that negatively affected our marketing efforts was the removal of modified broad match keywords in our PPC channels. Because our search campaigns were based around this keyword type, we had to scramble to adjust our campaign settings and expectations. We’re still working on recovering the return on ad spend of the channel we saw in the past.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
The biggest lesson learned this year is the power of partnership. By partnering with influencers, reviewers, and manufacturers, we’ve seen tremendous growth that could only have been realized by working with people outside the company.
One personal lesson I’ve learned is the need to hire more people to take over my workload. When you own a company, whatever isn’t being done falls on your plate. By offloading business tasks like finances, sales, and ordering supplies, I’ve found more time to focus on growth opportunities for the business and, more importantly, more time with my family.
It’s always difficult for an owner to relinquish control and build the right team to assume those responsibilities are crucial for his well-being and the company.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year and the next five years?
We recently joined a buying group that has provided us access to brands we wouldn’t have otherwise and offers us a significant financial advantage and savings on many of the essential brands that we currently do business with. Joining this group is expected to add hundreds of thousands of dollars to our bottom line in the next 12 months and further strengthen our relationship with key vendors and our position within the industry.
We also plan to continue to grow by expanding our product catalog into other complimentary offerings such as premium, large format OLED TVs to offer “big screen solutions” when projection may not be suitable for the particular project or customer.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their businesses?
Invest in people. You’re one person, and you can’t do everything yourself. Hire up - bring in those who excel in certain areas where you may not fill in voids and offer insight and experience beyond your own.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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