COMPUTER PROGRAMMER Nicole Williams is, at 29, a stalwart member of the digital generation. With her online shop, Angel’s Book Store (www.angelsbookstore.com), she’s also become part of a direct marketing tradition she’s never even heard of: the kitchen table start-up.
While buffeted by Sept. 11 and anthrax, her 2-year-old dot-com is edging back toward profitability, racking up 20% more sales than it did last year at holiday time. The average sale is $55 to $60.
And though Williams doesn’t know of Lillian Vernon or Ron Popeil, she practices time-tested DM traditions. Take a good idea, identify a bulls-eye target and reach it with a clear and inexpensive message. Then, after making the sale, pour resources into getting those buyers to return.
And she does all this for the same reasons she launched her bookstore: It makes sense.
In 1999, Williams was engrossed in building her career as a computer programmer for commodities companies, she says from her home office in Houston. She’d still be writing code except for the fact that she enjoys reading African-American literature.
