Alaska items selling on Web

ANCHORAGE — From merchandise made of moose droppings to half-moon-shape Ulu knives, Alaska-theme products are finding a worldwide market on the Web.

"We certainly wouldn’t survive just from the Web business," said Jim Cottrell, owner of AlaskaGift.com and parent company JC Marketing Inc. "But it’s a nice addition to our wholesale business."

Cottrell displays a bag of "flowering moose nuggets" — droppings implanted with Alaska wildflower seeds.

"Actually, it’s one of our best sellers," he said. "These, and the moose nugget earrings, tie tacks, key chains, they all sell on the Net."

Cottrell runs the company with his wife, Denise, and brother Roy.

He said the firm’s main line of business is distributing products to gift shops, but Internet marketing has been adding steadily to its annual revenue for the past five years.

He’s learned a few lessons about selling in cyberspace — especially the need to hold down freight costs.

"When we first started out, we were paying the shipping to customers, and that didn’t work at all," he said.

Sometimes the shipping charges for an order are higher than the cost of the item itself, Cottrell said, but that doesn’t stop people from buying.

"People will pay that little bit extra for a ‘Made in Alaska’ Ulu knife instead of buying the imported ones," he said.

Alaska videos, photograph collections and calendars also move off the shelves regularly through Web orders, Cottrell said.

"We’re always adding new products," he said. "And what really got us started was that we’d get so many calls from people who bought a knife or a photo album, and they wanted another one, but some of the local stores didn’t want to ship just one item out. So we started using the Web for that."

Richard Jameson and his wife, Ana, have been operating Alaska Internet Marketing Inc. out of Jameson’s law office in Anchorage since 1996, and he said business is brisk.

"It’s good. It continues to grow," he said. "We’ve seen a lot of people come into and go out of the business, but it generally continues to grow and grow."

The company designs and hosts Web sites for dozens of Alaska and Lower 48 companies. It also sells Web-based advertising to clients who want to reach out and get noticed, and publishes Internet directories to promote sites.

Jameson said online marketing is "particularly perfect" for Alaska entrepreneurs.

"There are not many other ways to economically market your goods, we’re just so far away from everything," he said. "We try to keep our clients as well-positioned as we can on the Internet. For us to try to go sell things, especially tourist-related things in the Lower 48, the Internet is hot," Jameson said.

A lot more than moose droppings and vacation packages are being sold here through Net connections. Wes Landes, owner of Airglas Inc., creates custom fiberglass skis and other accessories for a variety of helicopters and small fixed-wing aircraft at his shop in south Anchorage.

He said the company’s Web site has generated plenty of sales calls and provides information for consumers.

"It saves people from calling up and asking a bunch of questions, when most of it is explained on the Web site," Landes said.

He said the Web presence has attracted potential customers from the domestic and international markets, and it helps the company to stay in contact with aircraft manufacturers.

"They’re from all over the world, and we do work with the major helicopter companies like Boeing and Bell and Sikorsky," Landes said.

For companies still considering whether to use the Internet for marketing, a few statistics might help to put it into perspective.

According to a report released in November by the U.S. Department of Commerce, online retail sales rose by 27 percent during the third quarter of 2003. Third-quarter 2003 e-commerce revenue accounted for 1.5 percent of $872.5 billion in total retail sales for the period, compared with 1.3 percent a year ago.

And Jupiter Research Group, an industry analysis firm, reported in November that holiday retail e-commerce revenues will reach nearly $17 billion, a 21 percent jump over the same period in 2002.