Label.com is home of Bradley Name Plates. Bradley is a job shop which utilizes a wide variety of custom materials and processes it has acquired from over the years. Jim Bradley is the man behind it all and he shares
Mike: I read that the company was founded in 1976. Can you talk about how the business has evolved since that time? How has the market changed and what shifts have you seen, such as online sales, in that evolution?
Jim: In the beginning, a post card mailing yielded long lasting results as did door to door and more elaborate mailings. By the year 2000, near zero results. Presently, nothing we have tried yields results. Most of our new customers are referrals or sub-contractors associated with existing customers. Large firms delegate manufacturing to sub-contractors such as Flextronics, local and China.
Mike: Who are your primary customers?
Jim: Within any given quarter we have about 250 high tech customers. Barracuda, Cisco Systems, Lam Research, Tesla and more.
Mike: Can you share what you paid for the name?
Jim: Initially bradleynp.com Purchased Label.com about the year 2000 for $25,000. It was offered to me by an associate, an online label company going out of business. I could not afford it at the time but bought it anyway, recognizing that it would be an asset.
Mike: Have you received any unsolicited offer for the name?
Jim: A few, most did not understand the value. I did turn down $400,000 for it recently(our company was worth only about two million). I consider the value of Label.com com to be at least 1% of a 10 year marketing budget. It seems to me that clothing and record companies would benefit from Label.com. My license plate is Label.com
Mike: What benefits have you seen from the single, key word domain name?
Jim: Easier to say than bradleynp.com. Simple, easy for our customers. We could track very little traffic or result from the web even though for at least six months we were at the top of search results. It attracted scams and un-professional buyers.
Mike: How do you market your business? Do you do anything outside of Google organic search results and the great domain name?
Jim: I gave up, nothing we tried worked. I expect to put some thought into it soon.
Mike: Can you tell us the volume of traffic you see on a monthly basis?
Jim: Summary of our sales and performance. We are a job shop, basically printers of industrial labels and panel graphics. 90+% of our sales are repeat orders. Until 2000, our income was in the top 10% of all companies as reported by our industry association. Sales rose to about eight million dollars with 50 employees, most of our sales was with Cisco Systems, we had a desk on site and stocked seven of their production lines daily. We had similar arrangements with other companies. About the year 2000 Cisco and most of our large customers moved production to China, our sales dropped to two million dollars overnight has stayed at that level until recently. We are now near three million dollars. We lost no customers, but the big jobs went to China. We were near bankruptcy three times but recovered and generally have done well.We have significant competition but have an excellent reputation, seldom lose a customer because we spoil them with excessive customer service and quality. About 16% of our jobs are shipped overseas to ten different countries but mostly 30 locations within China. Flextronics and similar companies.
And that is my story.
