

Ask HN: My company is dying, what can I do to save it? - throwaway142536

I work at a small online retailer in a sports apparel niche. For years we were quite successful, but over the last few years things have taken a turn, and the owners have decided to sell or liquidate the company.<p>I&#x27;m the sole programmer and my job ends in a few weeks, except as needed for emergencies on an hourly basis.<p>The main reasons for the decline are:<p>- Our organic traffic from Google suddenly declined by 1&#x2F;3 two years ago. Where we once ranked in the top spots, now you&#x27;ll find Amazon, REI and other large retailers. We have no idea why this happened.<p>- Customer acquisition costs have increased. Where AdWords ads were once a great source, now the CPA on many keywords are no longer profitable or barely profitable.<p>- Our shipping expenses have increased due to consumer expectations for free shipping. Because of our size we can&#x27;t really negotiate low rates.<p>- The company built a large office&#x2F;warehouse, with an eye towards expanding or renting out the extra space, at the height of the real estate market. Needless to say we didn&#x27;t expand and have never been able to rent it out. The mortgage is a large expense.<p>So, HN, how can we turn things around?
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throwaway420
Turnarounds are unlikely with such a short time constraint and what sounds
like a desperate situation. This is probably where life moves on and you go
elsewhere soon.

If you don't have too much to lose, this is where you could conceivably try
some short term growth hacking strategies/gaming Google in a last ditch effort
to boost your search ranking. Go nuts with buying links and doing all of the
stuff Google doesn't want you to do. In the long run that will fail without
other changes but you might be able to squeeze a bit more life out of this and
maybe learn something in the process. Odds are against it though.

If you're just an employee rather than an owner, your limited remaining time
at work is probably better used applying for jobs and brushing up on technical
stuff for your upcoming interviews.

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bkrull
First stop the bleeding, sell off everything possible and cut costs to bare
min.

Then try new ways to start growing again: 1\. Try selling product on the
Amazon Marketplace to take advantage of the SEO traffic they gained. This will
cut your CPAs dramatically. If this works, expand to other marketplace
partners. 2\. Find local retail partners to sell products or open your own
store. 3\. Sell products at relevant sporting events. 4\. Consider selling
training, information, services or other high margin products.

None of this is easy nor a sure thing, exommerce is a cut throat game these
days. Best of luck.

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avni000
Those are a lot of factors to face but depending on the sports niche and
assuming that your product is superior/ well designed, then I might suggest
focusing on getting a strong following with that niche and growing from that
small position of strength.

For example, say it's biking apparel, I might reach out to bloggers/biking
sites and perhaps doing guest features or creating something of value with
them (giveaways?).

You should be able to help your SEO by creating content of value around your
niche and getting links to it (organic SE rank is likely tanking just because
people are getting what they need at those sites first and not bothering with
smaller players). Same with your AdWords - you won't be able to compete with
the massive marketing budgets of the bigger players so you'll have to be
creative about using words further down the tail. Look for other acquisition
opportunities by figuring out who your core target is and how you can get them
to spend more (perhaps an email newsletter highlighting news/new
products/trends in your niche?).

Just a couple of suggestions but hard to say for sure without knowing more
specifics of what you're dealing with.

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vgeek
SEO is longer term, and you may never be able to regain the top spots. Google
is becoming more and more biased towards Big Brands, coincidentally the same
brands that spend 8 figures a year on AdWords.

Short term fixes can be selling on Amazon Marketplace (possible to escape
warehouse lease, use Fulfillment by Amazon if cheaper?), eBay (yes, tons of
people still use eBay) or Shopping.com (yes, people use this site) and other
marketplaces. You'll still have to pay per sale or click to your site, but it
will typically be much less than AdWords.

If you are competing on price in a commodity market, you probably can't win.
If you have a differential, valuable feature that isn't easily imitable,
people may be willing to pay a premium.

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WWWade
I would suggest growing weed in that warehouse.

