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From stock jockey to pajama magnate, Valerie Johnson is a great example of what you can accomplish when you think globally. When the world is your market, instead of selling to millions of people, you’re selling to billions!
Valerie started a company that sells a cold-weather product footed pajamas for adults that doesn’t mean she has to live with meager sales when it’s summer in the United States. Using the Internet, she can always reach people looking for something warm and fuzzy to wear to bed on a cold night.
Valerie’s Life Journey:
Valerie’s journey from the high-stress job of stock trading to the comfort product industry is fascinating. The way she tells , it’s really not such a stretch to change from stock trader to selling pajamas over the Internet. In fact, Big Feet Pajama Co. was fueled by the same dream that fueled her stock trading ambitions: she wanted to look beyond her small-town upbringing and talk to the world. And she wanted to make a good living for herself. Like most people, Valerie’s childhood dream was to grow up and be successful. Raised on a Thoroughbred horse ranch, her first dream was to be a jockey.But she was age of 10. she had to give that up. Then she decided to be a stockbroker. After all, growing up around racehorses and racetracks gave Valerie an understanding of the thrill of gambling.
For her, the stock market was like legalized gambling And it wasn’t just gambling with the locals, it was gambling with businesses She was kind of shocked when she bought stock and there was a commission involved. she thought, Whoa, it’s great idea to buy the stock, why is he getting paid to write a ticket? That’s easy money; I should do that….She felt.
In reality, selling stocks wasn’t such an easy job, but it did expose Valerie to the business world, and it opened her eyes to many new possibilities. In 1987, when stock market crash happened, Valerie saw it as a good thing.she felt there were a lot of people who were going to be looking for a new broker,She thought it was an opportune time to jump in.
Valerie quit college and moved to Los Angeles to become a stockbroker. Over the course of about seven years, she struggled her way up from selling penny stocks to a pretty good career selling stocks for Lehman Brothers. Eventually, she went to work for a small boutique firm where she got involved in planning the IPOs of dot-com businesses.Like that she got many work experinece n huge exposer of work life.
When the dot-coms crashed, Valerie bounced. But she had some media contact,with the help of media contacts she made fateful change in her career and opt investor relations firms.
She worked in investor relations firms for long time but later she realised it was just wasting of time to been there.Despite of your hard work she never be appriciated by her boss n she didnt get proper salary too.So, finally she decided to quiet this job.It was big decision for her…She lost everything But she never gave up!
In the back of her mind, She had been thinking about a business selling one-piece footed pajamas just like the kind little childrens-footy-pajamas/kids-juniors-footy-pjs/”target=”_self”title=”Kids Footed Pajamas” >kids wear for adults. The idea first came to her at a party when the host’s child wandered out of his bed wearing his footed pajamas. Everyone at the party men and women, young and old gushed about how cute and comfy those pajamas looked.
As she thought of the little boy in his pajamas, Valerie remembered her own days wearing footed pajamas. They brought back pleasant memories of cozy childhood moments and fun Christmas mornings. The reactions of the guests at the party were proof that other people had the same feeling, too. When Valerie was a little child, she couldn’t pronounce the word pajamas so she called them her big feet.
It felt like the perfect, whimsical name, so Big Feet Pajama Co. was born. Valerie had just gotten through some very stressful times, taking the heat for a company whose product sickened people, sometimes fatally. She knew the value of using memories of simpler times just to get to sleep at night. Valerie hadn’t just found a quirky sleepwear option, she’d discovered a product that evoked warm childhood memories. Valerie began talking to her great public relations contacts.
She knew journalists and she understood that they were in the business of telling stories and they were always looking for some real-life examples to illustrate trends. So she figured she could use her press contacts to get out word about her own business.
valerie had some media contact before so used those contacts to communicate with people thats she was going to make special big feet pajamas for adult.In this ways pepople came to know n give bulk order to her.Thats was the great things happened with her.
she started the paperwork for incorporation, searched the fabric stores for the right fabric, and found a freelance costume designer who could work on designing a prototype of the pajamas. Then she spent a month running over to the designer’s house every night after work to perfect the design. Very quickly, Valerie had some prototypes of the footed pajamas. There was only one problem: she didn’t know anything about the apparel industry.
She went online and started looking for manufacturers. American manufacturers were too pricey and the ones who would even look at her product didn’t have the greatest working conditions, so Valerie looked overseas. This wasn’t as hard as it sounds thanks to an Internet site, www.alibaba.com, that brings together entrepreneurs and overseas manufacturers.
Using that site, Valerie found some Chinese sewing factories that would take her order for half what the U.S. manufacturers had quoted. But even though the Chinese factories had good prices, Valerie was uncomfortable. She wanted to be sure that she didn’t get into a mess that could blow up in her face; she’d heard horror stories about bad working conditions and child labor overseas. So she hopped on a plane and flew to China. If that’s not underestimating obstacles, I don’t know what is! It was nerve-racking, Valerie says of the trip. But using the contacts on the Alibaba.com Web site, she was able to visit the factories and discuss business pretty well. In the end, she put down $50,000 of her precious savings to order 5,000 pairs of pajamas from the manufacturer. Even if she failed to make a profit, at the very worst Valerie figured she could at least break even by selling them
at cost on eBay.
After nine months of planning, the 5,000 pajamas arrived at Valerie’s home. I didn’t realize how many boxes there would be! says Valerie, noting that her first husband thought she was crazy when the order came. We backed all the cars out of the garage, and the whole garage was filled to the brim with boxes.
People were peeking out their windows wondering, ‘Why is there a semi truck outside their house?’ Now Valerie had a garage full of pajamas and a Web site that was up and running. It was time to sell some pajamas. So she sent out email announcements that her Web store would be opening to all the thousands of people whose email addresses she’d been collecting.
Then her Web designer flipped the switch” to take the Web store live, and Valerie waited for the orders to come pouring in.
She didn’t have to wait long. Within 60 seconds, we had our first order. It was the funniest thing, Valerie says. In the coming months, Valerie spent 16 hours a day processing orders in the basement of her home. She boxed the pajamas, printed out invoices, printed out the wash and care instructions, and hand delivered the packages to the post office. In those early months, she had
enough orders to fill up her car every day. Within a week, she knew she needed more pajamas and quickly placed another order with her Chinese manufacturer. By Christmas, she was sold out, and the pajamas were back ordered into January because the factory couldn’t deliver them fast enough.
Within three months, the company was profit table. Valerie has been hanging on for the wild ride ever since. She experimented with key word advertising—spending $20 a day or so at first, then increasing her key word advertising budget little by little. As profits increased, Valerie had more money to spend on click-through advertising along with key word advertising. She now spends from $500 to $1,000 a day on click-through advertising during peak months and reinvests all her profits into more improvements. She uses the profits to buy more inventory, hire more employees, rent more warehouse space, upgrade to more powerful servers, and enhance the Web site. “I’ve just plowed all of the profits back into the company,” Valerie says. In her first year, she got a call from the people putting together the Academy Awards gift baskets that go to the stars; her pajamas were chosen to go into the gift bags because they seemed like the perfect thing for someone who has everything. And the Big Feet snowball just keeps rolling faster
Valerie Johnson of Big Feet Pajama Co. went from stockbroker to pajama mogul, achieved her life goal what she loves to do.
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